Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets are out of the 2021 NBA Playoffs. They looked like the unstoppable favorites at the onset of the second round, after they steamrolled the Boston Celtics and went up 2-0 against the Milwaukee Bucks. A championship felt more like an inevitability for KD, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving.

Fast forward five games later and they find themselves in the same boat as LeBron James, Donovan Mitchell, and Jimmy Butler before them — waiting until next season. But what stings extra for the Nets and their fans is how it all went down. Brooklyn came a shoe size away, quite literally, from advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals on a Kevin Durant Game 7 game-winner.

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That shot from Durant not only would have punched their ticket to the next round. It would have cemented arguably the greatest shot in KD's career, considering the context and immense stakes on the line. Instead, the Bucks got five extra minutes of overtime, which turned out to be the exact thing the Nets couldn't afford.

Steve Nash's Critical Kevin Durant Mistake

Steve Nash, Kevin Durant, Nets

Under normal circumstances, the Nets would have the advantage going into overtime playing at home with the crowd giving them the final jolt of adrenaline to compete. But these weren't normal circumstances.

Steve Nash made one crucial mistake that might have been what burned Brooklyn in the end. The Nets coach kept Kevin Durant on the floor for the entirety of Game 7, all 48 minutes of regulation and the last five of the extra period. KD planned to leave everything he had on the floor in this one and didn't have anything left in the tank during the decisive overtime.

Kevin Durant's display in overtime was downright horrific. The Nets star missed all six of his shots and dished zero assists. KD's only statistical imprint was a solitary rebound. But everyone watching knew exactly what was happening. Instead of getting hate for choking in a defining postseason situation, Kevin Durant got tons of admiration from his peers who flocked to Twitter to voice out how KD simply ran out of gas:

In all honesty, Steve Nash's decision-making probably had a lot of input from Kevin Durant himself. With Kyrie Irving wearing street clothes on the sidelines and James Harden hobbled, KD wanted to take on the burden for the full 48. But as the head coach, you have to be able to make the tough decisions that your players might not agree with. Durant needed a breather in the worst way in this one. Even just pockets of rest could have been the difference between winning and losing:

The ending to this game was sorrowfully poetic for Kevin Durant. It's simply telling that he had a near identical shot to win the game in overtime but came up well short versus his attempt in regulation. The Nets needed every one of KD's 49 points in Game 5, during one of the all-time greatest performances in NBA playoff history. Durant finished regulation with 48, one shy of his previous total. That one point became the difference between making history and going home early.