Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were in street clothes Thursday night at Barclays Center, which means any definitive matchup between the Knicks and the Nets isn’t going to happen at least until next season when both players are actually in uniform.
The Nets hope to get Irving back from a shoulder injury sometime in the near future, but Durant’s Achilles isn’t going to be fully healed until the 2020-21 season.
Still, the Nets remain in playoff contention this year, which on the surface meant this game carried more cache for Brooklyn than it did for the bottom-feeding Knicks.