Kevin Durant hyperextends knee, walks off court and does not return

Just about one minute into the game against the Wizards, a fairly innocuous crash between Marcin Gortat and Zaza Pachulia sent Pachulia rolling into the lower leg of Kevin Durant. The impact bent Kevin Durant’s knee backwards and Durant came away limping.

Here’s the play:

In those drastic moments when fate comes out of nowhere and slaps you in the face, there’s a sort of gut wrenching numbness that hits. You feel helpless. So much has changed in a split second. Numbness.

His foot was planted, but he walked off the court. So hopefully no big deal. Right?

...right?

For now, we wait. No word about the severity. Kerr confirms that it is a hyper-extended knee, but there is literally no update beyond that. Which is cool — I’d prefer to live with the unknown than have a bunch of wild guesses thrown at me.

It’s important to remember that hyperextended knee is just what happened. We don’t know what inuries have occured in the knee. According to Ethan Sherwood Strauss Durant has already had an MRI, but the Warriors will not be making any formal announcements until tomorrow (Wednesday).

If I was a guessing man, I’d say that’s a pretty good sign that there’s nothing significantly wrong in there (but I’m clearly no doctor). A full tear would be easy to see and there would be no point to withhold the information. It’s likely that they will consult multiple experts tomorrow in order to understand all the nuances of what the MRI shows.

For now, we all hold our collective breath, and send whatever positive energy we can muster towards our newest star.

Hope is good.

First and foremost, we just want Kevin Durant to be ok.

Be ok, Kevin.