@152 – Basketball is all about athleticism. Amare was a good, and smart player that’s why he continued to be valuable after his issues. If Durant is 80% of his former self physically, he won’t be top-50. It’s really simple.

I poked around PUBMED for studies on this stuff and while I could only find studies NFL, NBA and NHL players combined. While many didn’t return (biased for age correlation to injury?) the conclusion bodes well for Durant’s out years:

CONCLUSION : An Achilles tendon rupture is a devastating injury that prevents RTP for 30.6% of professional players. Athletes who do return play in fewer games, have less play time, and perform at a lower level than their preinjury status. However, these functional deficits are seen only at 1 year after surgery compared with matched controls, such that players who return to play can expect to perform at a level commensurate with uninjured controls 2 years postoperatively.

In English…. The Knicks if they sign him for 4 or 5 years should get 2.5-3.5 years of the pre-injury Durant we would expect to get without the injury. (his statistical decline phase).

Those are the best stats available.

Quite frankly , if this guy decides he wants to come here, it won’t be an A’mare deal where he did it for the money, it will be because he wants to give himself a challenge to show he is among the GOATs.

I can see Durant aging like a Reggie Miller on steroids.

He could maybe help the community a lot if he just stopped beating on his wife.

Cam Reynolds cut by Minnesota. He’d be an interesting guy to bring to Summer League.

Darren Collison to retire to concentrate on his Jehovah’s Witness ministry.

Ooooookay.

https://www.truehoop.com/p/how-to-ruin-an-elite-rookie

Anyone subscribe to this? I am curious about how, specifically, we ruin rookies. And how Mitch escaped that fate.

The rookies in question are Knox, Mudiay and Ntilikina. I can’t defend the Knicks player development, but those are 3 guys I thought shouldn’t have been drafted where they were.

However, why in the world would he come here for that? Surely, there’s got to be a second guy for him to come, and I really dislike Irving despite his scoring talent. And who is going to be willing to play on a terrible team for a whole year waiting for KD to heal?

My biggest bummer would be Cousins. But if KD and KI both get maxed here next week, I think that will end up a huge mistake.

Knicks might end up with Rozier and Tobias Harris.