The timeline remains vague, distant, uncertain. Kevin Durant may not play this season.
It is the expectation Sean Marks set this week. It is the plan Durant allowed the general manager to offer the public, as the 30-year-old rehabs from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered during the NBA Finals.
The Nets can be patient. The former MVP’s impact has already been felt.
“His presence when he walks into a room, when he walks into this facility … it’s a different vibe,” coach Kenny Atkinson said. “That presence changes things. It’s a different aura.”
And it’s a different era in Brooklyn, where the scrappy upstarts who broke a four-year playoff drought have transformed into the next NBA superteam, established when Durant and fellow free agents Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan joined forces on June 30.