The NBA sidelined Kevin Durant for COVID-19 contact tracing Friday night, and the Nets star has a two-word message for the league:
“Free me.”
Though Durant had tested negative for coronavirus three times in the previous 24 hours — including twice on Friday — the Nets were still forced to make him a last-minute scratch from the starting lineup. Then, Durant was allowed to enter the game before being pulled off the court in the third quarter and kept out for the rest of the Nets’ 123-117 loss to the Raptors at Barclays Center. Now, Durant is expected to miss Saturday’s clash at the East-leading 76ers — at least. And he isn’t happy about it.
“Free me,” Durant tweeted Friday night. “Yo @nba, your fans aren’t dumb!!!! You can’t fool em with your Wack ass PR tactics.. #FREE7”
Durant has already recovered from COVID-19, has antibodies and returned two negative PCR tests Friday, according to the league. But someone the Nets star had interacted with in the afternoon subsequently had an inconclusive test result shortly before tipoff. Durant was initially held out while that result was being reviewed, but then was given the OK by the league to play.
Under the NBA’s health and safety protocols, the league doesn’t require a player to be quarantined until a close contact has a confirmed positive test. During the game, a positive result was returned for the person with whom Durant had interacted. Once that test was confirmed positive, Durant was pulled from the game (“out of an abundance of caution,” according to the league) and contact tracing began to determine if he was in fact a close contact of the positive individual.
“I don’t believe he’ll come to Philly, but I don’t think it’s necessarily decided,” Nets coach Steve Nash said. “It’s a contact tracing procedure and it’s to be determined how much time he’ll have to miss. But we’re just gathering information at this point.
“I hope it’s more of a to-be-determined situation than a situation where it’s one-week quarantine. I don’t know. I hope that obviously we don’t lose him for the week, but I’m not sure exactly right now. We’re still trying to filter what kind of information we can gather and the type of parameters around the decision.”
Friday isn’t the first time Durant has had to deal with the new coronavirus or contact tracing.
Durant had COVID-19 in May, and last month he had to serve a seven-day quarantine and miss games against the Jazz, 76ers and Grizzlies due to contact tracing.
He also tested positive for antibodies recently, but the league’s COVID-19 protocols don’t differentiate between players who have antibodies and those that don’t, so Durant isn’t exempt. It’s a situation that has left both Durant and his teammates vexed.
“He feels the same way, especially him already having it,” James Harden said. “We get tested every single day. He’s been negative, so I don’t understand what the problem is.”
The Nets announced at 7:38 p.m. — about two minutes before the lineups were revealed — that Durant wouldn’t be available to start. There were additional tests on whomever Durant had come in contact with, and the league eventually cleared him to play. He checked in replacing Harden with 4:13 left in the first quarter.
Still, Durant’s night only lasted 19 minutes. With 9:06 left in the third, after Nash called a timeout to challenge a call (a fifth foul on Durant), word came down that he’d have to sit the rest of the night.
“They continued to test to try to gain clarity and I think there was a positive test, there was a negative test, there was an inconclusive test,” Nash said. “You add it all up, it was misleading for a moment, and that’s why he was allowed to play.
“They continued to test to try to gather more data, and the last test was positive, so I think that was the final straw that pulled him out of the game, but I don’t want to say too much. My head’s spinning a little bit from all the parameters of Kevin’s situation, but also trying to coach our team in a shifting landscape.”
Durant finished with eight points — the first time he had failed to crack double figures since Feb. 28, 2017 when he logged just 1:33 for the Warriors.
It remains to be seen if Durant will have to quarantine again, or for how long.