The Brooklyn Nets should now be the happiest team in the league. Following Kevin Durant's return to state, today New York Mayor Eric Adams officially announced that professional athletes and performers are allowed to obtain (vaccine) exemptions in the workplace. This means that Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving is officially allowed to play in all of the Nets' home games.
At the beginning of the season, Irving was unable to play against the Nets due to refusal to be vaccinated, and it was not until the middle of the season, when several players triggered safety and health agreements and were banned, and the NBA league was nearly suspended, and Kyrie Irving was allowed to play in the Nets' away games. At that time, there were constant voices supporting Irving's return to home qualification, and recently there have been news of Irving's home exemption, until today, the mayor of New York officially announced that Irving lifted the ban.
In this way, Irving will officially regularize from a part-time player and become a qualified full-time player. If all goes well, Kyrie Irving will make his home debut next Monday in the Nets' game against the Hornets. The last time the two teams met, Irving slashed 50 points to take a win away from Charlotte. In the past four games, Irving's form is even more impressive, averaging 43.8 points, 5.8 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 1.8 steals per game, and his three-shot shooting rate is as high as 62%+61%+89%! Kyrie Owen in this state is definitely the top scorer in the league.
The current Nets are eighth in the East with a 38-35 record, and now that it is the end of the regular season, Irving's timely comeback can give the Nets a lot of help, and Irving's return will largely determine the opponents the Nets face in the first round of the playoffs. So far this season, Irving has played in 20 games for the Nets, averaging 36.5 minutes of playing time per game, 28.5 points, 4.6 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 1.4 steals, and shooting 43.8% from three-point range. So far this season, Irving has averaged 9.1 points per game in the final quarter, ranking first in the league.
Kyrie Owen + Kevin Durant, such a duo in the league can be said to be one of the best. Kevin Durant, who averaged 29.7 points, 7.3 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game, and Kyrie Irving, who averaged 28.5 points, 4.6 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game, are definitely enough to dominate the league. We have to admit that the Nets with "Durant + Irving" have a very high offensive ceiling, and it can even be exaggerated that their offensive ceiling is currently the highest of all the teams in the league - the two-man game against the Grizzlies combined to score 78 points is almost against the entire Grizzlies.
But there is one thing that the Nets also need to pay attention to, in order to win the championship, it is far from enough to rely on strong offensive ability, the Nets' defensive ability is the problem they need to worry about the most, after getting Zhuang Shen, their internal line is better than before, but in the face of strong teams such as the Nuggets and Cavaliers, it is still difficult for them to take advantage of the inside. In addition, the help that other players can give Durant and Irving is really limited, which requires Nash to rationally arrange tactics to maximize the strength of the Nets' lineup.