Getty NBA and NBAPA hosting players-only NBA 2K Tournament featuring Kevin Durant and others
Brooklyn Nets star, Kevin Durant has been quite resourceful during his year-long break from basketball where he’s been rehabbing his Achilles injury.
One person that understands his rehab process is two-time NBA champion, Mario Chalmers.
Kevin Durant will return to Nets strong post Achilles rehab @mchalmers15 tells Scoop B Radio – t.co/u2zdCSonnP
“I think they’re good, especially KD. KD pretty much 7 feet, has a jumper, long arms, so I know for him it won’t take away his explosiveness like that.”
Chalmers ruptured his right Achilles tendon in March 2016 in a 116–96 loss to the Boston Celtics.
“That’s the worst injury in the world,” Chalmers told me on today’s episode of the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“I’ll tell people all the time. I wouldn’t wish that injury on my worst enemy. For me, it’s just something like you’re starting all over again. Me, I just had to learn how to walk again, how to run, just get confidence in using my legs and that foot. So it was a lot of things for me. My story is a little bit different because I had three different surgeries and my stitches wasn’t reacting well to my body so that’s what kept me out longer was that reason right there. Once I finally got healed it wasn’t easy to get back on the court, but it was easier to deal with what I was dealing with the stitches.”
Chalmers is confident that Duant will return back to form. “Yeah, it’s a tough injury to come back from,” he said.
GettyFormer Miami Heat teammates LeBron James, Mario Chalmers and Dwyane Wade.
“But I think they’re good, especially KD. KD pretty much 7 feet, has a jumper, long arms, so I know for him it won’t take away his explosiveness like that, but for a guy like Boogie who was in the NBA and really wasn’t that explosive as it is, it’s just different ways you have to adjust your game. It’s a learning process.
A two-time NBA Champion like Chalmers, Kevin Durant has made the most of his time away from playing NBA basketball.
“My road back starts now,” Durant posted in a now-deleted post via Instagram following his surgery last year.
“I got my family and my loved ones by my side and we truly appreciate all the messages and support people have sent our way,” Durant wrote on Instagram about the injury he suffered against Toronto in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday. “I’m hurting deeply, but I’m OK. Basketball is my biggest love and I wanted to be out there that night because that’s what I do. I wanted to help my teammates on our quest for the three peat.”
The two-time NBA Finals MVP has been curating movies like Stephon Marbury’s A Kid From Coney Island and Basketball County: In the Water; a film that highlights hoops in Prince George’s County, Maryland through his Thirty Five Ventures platform.
Both films dig into the root of both regions in a pre-social media era of grassroots basketball in both regions.