The 2025 NBA playoffs produced a string of devastating injuries with each of Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton seeing their seasons come to an end with torn Achilles tendons. Haliburton is already ruled out for the entire 2025-26 season, and the other two face uphill battles to avoid missing a full year of action. When Kevin Durant sustained the same injury in the 2019 playoffs, he did not play the following season and saw his Golden State Warriors run come to an end.
Durant will be an invaluable resource to each of the injured stars throughout their recovery processes. Tatum and Lillard already reached out to the former MVP, he said, in their first few months on the mend.
“Those guys are cut from a cloth that they’re rare individuals,” Durant said on the “Mind the Game” podcast. “This is just a little stoppage in their journey that they’re just going to have to sit down and lock in on. I think it’ll be easy for them to lock in once they truly grasp that ‘I’m gonna be out for a year.’ Initially that takes a few weeks for you to truly understand. This is probably the first time in their whole lives they gotta sit down and not play. They physically can’t play. That’s probably the first time they’ve had to go through that.”
Lillard will turn 35 next week, making him about four years older than Durant was when he underwent his surgery. Entering the latter stages of his career, there are questions about whether the former Portland and Milwaukee star will ever return to his perennial status as one of the league’s top shooters and most dynamic point guards.
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“You can elevate or drown, in my opinion,” Durant said. “I think both of those dudes have shown you time and time again that they’re going to continue to elevate as individuals and as players. But it’s a grind, man.”
Tatum, meanwhile, has ample basketball ahead of him if he gets back in the realm of his pre-injury caliber. He was one of the top scorers in the league and a four-time MVP vote-getter before his tendon tear. At 27, the Boston superstar could have numerous years of elite production ahead of him, but Achilles injuries are generally regarded as some of the toughest to overcome and often prevent players from realizing their full potential.
“Your game and your body is going to for sure change,” Durant said. “Most of the work is getting that calf back. You gotta get it bigger and stronger. I think that’s going to be the adjustment for them. Those deep 3s that both of those guys shoot, they shoot a lot of tough, stepback 3s. And I was shooting those before I got injured, and I fine-tuned my game to take some of that stuff out.”
