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Brian Windhorst, ESPN Senior Writer
LONDON — Kevin Durant was able to practice with Team USA for the first time Friday as he recovers from a right calf injury with coach Steve Kerr hoping he can get into one of the team’s last two tune-up games before the Paris Olympics.
Durant is questionable for Saturday night’s game at O2 Arena against South Sudan as team officials want to monitor how he recovers. But practicing was an important sign of progress in getting Team USA’s all-time leading Olympic scorer back after he’d missed all activities over the past two weeks.
“I would love for him to play in a game, but we have to take it day by day,” Kerr said. “We’ll see where he is tomorrow.”
Durant suffered the injury in workouts in mid-June. The team stayed away from a timeline but it lingered longer than Durant had hoped. He admitted he was getting worried that the recovery might threaten his availability for the Olympics.
“You always had those concerns, but I see progress every day,” said Durant, who has averaged 19.8 points per game over the past three Olympics.
“It’s one of those things you just got to monitor every day and I see how I feel after I do certain movements and certain exercises. But my thing is just keep working and see what happens.”
Durant said a previous left calf injury from 2019, which happened just before he tore his Achilles tendon in the same leg in that year’s NBA Finals, did not factor into his thinking about recovering from this injury.
Durant and LeBron James were in London with Team USA for the first time since the 2012 Olympics, where they were key members of the gold medal winning squad.
But James has been spending his evenings on this trip watching summer league games, where his son Bronny James has put together several good performances for their Los Angeles Lakers. Bronny had 12 points and a clutch 3-pointer against the Atlanta Hawks and then had 13 points, five rebounds and three assists in a comeback win against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday.
“I mean he’s 19 years old so he has so much room to grow, he has so much more to learn,” LeBron said. “But the best thing, he just keeps his head down and just stays focused. The work will pay off. As a family obviously we’re just proud of the fact that he’s even at this point.”