The Brooklyn Nets are rolling right along through the NBA regular season. They are atop the Eastern Conference with a record of 17-8, a half-game ahead of the Chicago Bulls. But, if the Nets are going to sustain this level of success, they may have to make some tweaks.
Right now, Brooklyn is relying very heavily on the tandem of Kevin Durant and James Harden. They are one of the best duos in the NBA, but they are exerting a ton of energy every night to keep the Brooklyn Nets competitive and win games.
Durant and Harden are playing a ton of minutes right now, which could be a cause for concern. It has been two and a half years since Durant ruptured his Achilles, but the workload still makes people nervous.
Eventually, a player is going to get back to his normal workload following an injury. Head coach Steve Nash thinks there has been enough time in between for everyone to be more confident in Durant holding up.
“I think there’s enough distance from the injury that we feel more confident,” Nash said. “At the same time, we don’t love it. We can do all this talk about improving through the year, but there’s always the risk of sometimes overburdening him and James as well. We have to be careful. I’m not sure if tomorrow’s the day, but there will be times in the season where we have to be really smart and make difficult decisions.”
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Durant has seen his minutes increase recently, averaging 40.4 minutes per game in the last five. He understands the concern, but no longer wants to hear about it.
“I know people might be concerned about my minutes and I got injured before and all this extra s—, but we’ll figure it out if I get there,” Durant said after Brooklyn’s 102-99 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday. “Right now, I want to play basketball.”
Durant played 40 minutes and 30 seconds against the Mavericks on Tuesday night. He is currently averaging 36.2 minutes per game, which is top-10 in the NBA. At 33-years old, he is on pace to play the most minutes per game since the 2013-14 season when he was 25-years old with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Brooklyn opted to rest Durant during Wednesdays’ loss to the Houston Rockets — causing Harden to be the long star on the floor.
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James Harden is also in the top-10 for minutes per game, right behind Kevin Durant at 35.9. He was on the court even longer against the Mavericks, playing 41 minutes and 35 seconds. It was the fourth time in the last five games that Harden has surpassed the 40-minute plateau.
Much like Durant, he isn’t overly concerned with playing a lot of minutes. If he could, he would play all 48.
“One thing about me and KD, we love to play basketball,” Harden said. “So it don’t matter. We could play the whole 48. Even if we’re exhausted. Coach says something — nope. We wanna stay in the game. We wanna play.”
While it is good to know that Durant and Harden are not phased by the heavy workload, Brooklyn management has to have some worries about it. Relying on them to carry the team to this extent for 58 more games before even beginning the postseason is unrealistic.
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The Brooklyn Nets need other players to start stepping up to help take some of the pressure off of their superstar duo. While they are willing and talented enough to do it, the risk of wearing down and not being able to perform when the team needs it most at the end of the season is legitimate.
Last season alone Kevin Durant and James Harden suffered from a myriad of ailments that kept them off the court. While they have held up thus far this season, the Nets would be smart to figure out a way to lessen the burden on their shoulders so that they can continue performing at peak level in April, May and June when the postseason rolls around.
