Kevin Durant Will Return From His Knee Sprain Thursday Night Against The Heat

The Brooklyn Nets have been in a freefall since Kevin Durant went down with a sprained left MCL in mid-January, going 5-16 over the 21 games since he suffered the injury — and trading James Harden in the process.

While the Nets remain unsure of when the top prize of that trade, Ben Simmons, will be available to them — he has apparently had a bit of a setback in his ramping up to play again and is now considered “week-to-week” — they are getting their most important player back on Thursday. The team announced on Wednesday that Durant was no longer on the injury report and would make his return in Brooklyn when the Nets play host to the East-leading Miami Heat.

There are few teams in the NBA hotter than Miami right now, so it will be a stern test of Durant’s conditioning as he jumps back into NBA action. The Nets are currently eighth in the East at 32-31, a full three games back of Toronto after being swept by the Raptors on a back-to-back to start this week. If Brooklyn is going to claw out of the play-in, it will be incumbent on Durant to produce at an MVP level again and Brooklyn is going to have to start beating teams like the Heat to make the up the massive gap to the 6-seed, where Boston is a full 4.5 games up.