Kevin Durant drops 31 points in return from MCL injury, can't lead Nets past Heat
After missing more than a month with a sprained MCL, Kevin Durant came flying back for the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday night.
He just wasn’t enough to lift the Nets past the Miami Heat.
The Heat held on to beat the Nets 113-107 at the Barclays Center behind 30 points from Bam Adebayo and 27 off the bench from Tyler Herro. Durant scored a team-high 31 points in the loss, and he was about all Brooklyn had offensively.
Final pic.twitter.com/4qRXhbBYEc
— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) March 4, 2022
"I felt great," Durant said, via SB Nation's Chris Milholen. "I'm only going to get better and get more comfortable out there. I feel solid."
Durant went down with a knee injury on Jan. 15 and hadn’t played since. The Nets struggled without him, going 5-16 while plummeting down the Eastern Conference standings.
Durant was averaging 29.3 points, 7.4 rebounds and 5.8 assists before his injury.
"I feel energized," Durant said before the game, via ESPN. "I feel grateful for the opportunity to play. It sucks being out and not being around the team. I felt bad not being able to help and contribute and try to turn some things around for us. But get an opportunity tonight and hopefully moving forward where I can inject what I do into this team and hopefully it provides some good results."
That didn’t quite work out.
Brooklyn led by seven points at halftime before Miami mounted a 14-0 run in the third to take the lead. Though the Nets cut their deficit to two after a quick four points from Durant late in the final period, the Heat held on to take the six-point win.
Adebayo was a few assists shy of a triple-double for the Heat, as he finished with 11 rebounds and six assists to go with his 30 points. Herro shot 8-of-19 from the field and added eight assists off the bench, and Caleb Martin added 22 points. Miami has won 10 of its past 12.
The Heat were shorthanded, and exhausted, after a last-second loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night.
"Nobody felt great today," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, via the Miami Herald's Anthony Chiang. "When you get in at [4 a.m.] and get to bed and the sun is already coming up, you're not going to feel awesome. So it was just a matter of trying to come together and inspire each other and just find a way to gut it out."
Bruce Brown added 21 points for the Nets while shooting 8-of-13 from the field, and Patty Mills put up 14 points off the bench. Outside of Durant, those three were the only ones in double figures. The Nets have lost five of their past six games.
