Kyrie Irving made history on Friday night, scoring 54 points on 19-of-23 shooting to lead the Brooklyn Nets to a 133-118 victory over the Chicago Bulls. Just 24 hours later, he was hobbling off the court against the Washington Wizards with a knee injury. The Nets diagnosed it as a medial ligament sprain, and said that he would be reevaluated in one week after undergoing an MRI.
Irving left the game late in the fourth quarter and made his way to the locker room with the Nets leading 101-98. After his departure, the Wizards went on a 15-6 run to close the game and secure a 113-107 victory.
With just over five minutes left in the fourth, Irving went up for a rebound and got tangled up with Bradley Beal on the way down. The Wizards guard tried to rip the ball away, and in the process pulled Irving to the ground. In the resulting fall, Irving’s leg got caught underneath Beal and bent at an irregular angle.
Irving screamed and stayed on the ground while the Nets’ medical staff rushed over. After a brief consultation, he tried to stay in the game but soon hobbled back to the locker room. He was able to leave under his own power, which is definitely not a bad thing, but as we’ve learned over the years, it’s no guarantee of anything regarding the seriousness of an injury.
“I’ve done some pretty decent things to my knees in the past,” Irving said. “The most important thing is just making sure my ACL was fine. It was just a weird, weird, weird fall. I just felt a lot stretching and tension afterward. Just a bad fall.”
This was just Irving’s eighth game back in the Nets lineup after he missed two months with a shoulder injury. With Kevin Durant out, and Irving joining him on the sideline for much of that time, it hasn’t been the season the Nets were hoping for. Still, even at 21-27, they’re hanging on to the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference.
They’re by no means a lock to get in, however, as they’re just half a game up on the Orlando Magic for the seventh seed, and 3.5 games ahead of the ninth-place Chicago Bulls. As such, they’ll be desperately hoping for good news on Irving’s knee.
