After Durant, who is Team USA’s all-time points leader, missed all five of the U.S.’s exhibition games leading up to the 2024 Paris Olympics with a calf strain, ESPN‘s Brian Windhorst reported that he thinks “(Team USA) is gonna be playing Serbia without Kevin Durant.”
The Americans play their first group play game of the Olympics against Serbia on Sunday (July 28).
Team USA coach Steve Kerr said after the team’s final exhibition win over Germany on Monday that “there’s no thought of replacing Kevin” ahead of Saturday’s deadline to submit the Olympic rosters.
Kerr also said Durant was “day-to-day” and the plan was for him to have “a couple practices in a row and a scrimmage” before being made available. Kerr was Durant’s coach when he played through a strained calf during the 2019 NBA Finals and ended up tearing his Achilles.
Windhorst reported Wednesday that Durant participated in the team first practice in France where Kerr discussed Durant’s injury status.
“It’s not just our training staff, but [USA Basketball managing director Grant Hill] is constantly in touch with Kevin’s people and with the Suns,” Kerr said via Windhorst. “This is not going to be like us going out and saying, ‘Hey, let’s just throw him out there.’ This will be a big collaboration.”
Windhorst added that “Team USA is planning to have a contact practice Thursday in Paris where Durant can hopefully take the next step in his return. He suffered the calf strain a month ago.”
Steve Kerr: "There's no thought of replacing Kevin"
Jrue: "That's Kevin Durant my boy. What are we talking about? That's KD. He need to be out there"pic.twitter.com/KQuax4n6II
— Oh No He Didn't (@ohnohedidnt24) July 22, 2024
“The plan is for him to get in the scrimmage and see how he handles that,” Kerr said. “He looked good today and he did everything and got a lot of shots up and told me he’s feeling pretty good.”
According to Windhorst, Durant’s agent, Rich Kleiman, told ESPN “that Durant has been working tirelessly to return to play and he could’ve played during Team USA’s games in London.”
Despite going undefeated in the exhibition games, Team USA has had some really close calls and has struggled to find a rhythm offensively. The U.S.’s best outing game against Serbia last week, a 105-79 win, but Nikola Jokić really struggled in this matchup and they were without Bogdan Bogdanović.
Durant has been the team’s leading scorer the last three Olympics, which have all resulted in gold medals. Even at age 35, the hope was that Durant could once again be a top scorer on this already-loaded Olympic team.
Red, White & Buckets! 🇺🇸
KD owns each of the top 3 spots for highest individual competition scoring average in @usabasketball Men’s Olympic history! pic.twitter.com/WGVYRFQyw8
— Phoenix Suns (@Suns) July 17, 2024
For now, we will wait and see when Durant makes his debut for this year’s Team USA squad.
