Given the good chance Durant will not play at all next season and who knows what kind of player he will be after will he remained unsigned next season? Plus this injury might impact guys who want to sign the 1-2 deals and keep rolling the dice for bigger deals. Not that he even needs the money but Durant could have had a 6-7 year deal anytime he wanted after leaving OK.
"It's a 8-12 months recovery," Dr. Alan Beyer, an orthopedic surgeon and executive director of the Hoag Orthopedic Institute, told CBS Sports on Tuesday. "Usually closer to the year from what we've seen with other NBA players having this injury."
Bottom line: There's a chance, perhaps a good chance, that Durant will miss all of next season if indeed it is a full Achilles rupture.
Will he ever be the same player?
"Very tough to say. As we saw with Kevin and initial injury, everyone responds differently," Dr. Beyer told CBS Sports. "I will say this: When you're reconstructing an Achilles, to tension your repair exactly back to the link that it was before, it is very difficult to get that exactly right. Then, in the healing process itself, you get some scarring and you get some contraction of some tissue, so the tendon can wind up a little bit tighter than it started.
"Now, in an everyday average person, this is fine, because you're only asking them to return to everyday functions like walking, regular jogging, just normal, non-explosive movements," Dr. Beyer continued. "In an NBA player who has to jump explosively and cut and move in quick bursts, that's a huge obstacle to overcome. And it's not just the straight vertical leap. If you lose just a tiny bit of your leaping, for instance, the shooting arc that you've used your whole life is actually a little bit destroyed. So it impacts everything. It can be a devastating injury. I mean you can count the guys who have had this injury and come back to be even close to what they were before. It's not many."