Nash concerned about Durant’s minutes played

“It’s a really big issue,” Nash said before Brooklyn hosted the Philadelphia 76ers at Barclays Center on Thursday night. “I don’t know that we can continue to lean on him the way we have. It’s not good.

“I know he’s enjoying it. I know he’s enjoying playing at the pace he’s playing at and trying to bring his teammates with him and all the responsibility he’s accepted. It’s been unbelievable. But, at the same time it’s not safe or sustainable to lean on him like that. There will be a lot of consideration and we’ll have to find ways to rest him.”

Durant is averaging 36.9 minutes per game this season, the fourth most in the NBA behind Raptors point guard Fred VanVleet, teammate OG Anunoby and Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James. That’s the most minutes per game Durant has averaged in eight years, as he averaged 38.5 minutes per night during the 2013-14 season, when he scored 32 points per game and claimed his only MVP award.

The 33-year-old played a season-high 48 minutes in Tuesday night’s overtime win over the Raptors at Barclays Center, finishing with a 34-point triple-double in Brooklyn’s 131-129 victory, the fifth time in 26 games this season that he has eclipsed the 40-minute mark. He did so after being listed as questionable to play Tuesday morning because of a sore right ankle.

“I’m just trying to do what’s required,” Durant said, when asked about his minutes load after Tuesday’s win. “I mean, I want to be out there. I want to play. I want to win.

“Whatever I have to do to accomplish those three things, I’m going to do it.”

For the Nets, however, the challenge is not just winning now, but winning several months from now, when Brooklyn hopes to make a deep run in the Playoffs while fighting for its first NBA championship.

That will require keeping Durant healthy throughout the season after missing the entire 2019-20 campaign due to a ruptured Achilles suffered in Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals and playing just 35 regular-season games last session due to recurring hamstring issues.

Durant has missed just two games so far this season. But with Brooklyn down seven players due to NBA health and safety protocols for a minimum of another week, plus being without Joe Harris, who is recovering from ankle surgery, and Kyrie Irving, who has yet to play this season after sitting out Nash said he needs to balance keeping the Nets afloat during the shorthanded period without putting too much strain on Durant’s body, per New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

While Nash said veteran point guard Langston Galloway, whom the Nets signed to a hardship waiver Wednesday, was available for Thursday’s game, giving Brooklyn nine available players, Nash admitted that having enough players available to keep playing is a double-edged sword.

“The question is we’re over the threshold, so to speak, which is a positive,” Nash said, referring to the NBA’s minimum requirement of having eight healthy players available to play in a game. “At the same time, we’re just barely over the threshold. So what about our players?

“Is it better to be over the threshold and not be playing until you have a healthy roster or is it better to have enough to play, but be understaffed and the burden and the cost that these guys have and know that you’re going to have guys that haven’t been able to practice or play basketball? So it’s definitely tricky to navigate.”

As for Brooklyn’s opponent on Thursday, 76ers coach Doc Rivers said Georges Niang, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, said no one else had tested positive yet. But after going through their own flare-up earlier this season, one that cost them both superstar center Joel Embiid and second-leading scorer Tobias Harris, Rivers said the team made a call Wednesday to try to adjust its own protocols amid COVID-19 spikes around the world. the country, let alone in professional sports.

“We probably had all the sports leagues put their brains together at the same time,” Rivers said, adding that he has received calls from other coaches in recent days asking him for advice on how to steer losing players to COVID-19. “I know we had an individual call and talked to our own people about making our own changes. We’re going to make some of our own changes. We want to be the team with the least. We’re still leading, I think, with the COVID games off. That stretch was brutal for us and it’s not fun.”

“We probably had all the sports leagues put their brains together at the same time,” Rivers said, adding that he has received calls from other coaches in recent days asking him for advice on how to steer losing players to COVID-19. “I know we had an individual call and talked to our own people about making our own changes. We’re going to make some of our own changes. We want to be the team with the least. We’re still leading, I think, with the COVID games off. That stretch was brutal for us and it’s not fun.”