Forget everything that bewitched, bothered and bewildered the Nets this season. There has been one reason to tune in every night to watch then play — well, at least 55 days and nights, anyway. Kevin Durant is that reason.

Nothing else has gone according to plan during this three-year chapter. The Nets were quickly excused from the bubble in 2020. James Harden pushed his way here, arrived, played well, grew disenchanted, pushed his way out, all in the space of 14 months. Kyrie Irving has been hurt, he’s been unvaccinated and unavailable. The Nets were going to win 60 games this year. They settled on 44, and needed a 12-5 hot streak at the end to get there.

Through it all, Durant has been magnificent.

Through it all, Durant has been the one thing the Nets can count on, game after game, night after night, crisis after crisis. He was given a novice coach and all he’s done is help make Steve Nash’s job easier for him. He was given a pair of supporting stars in Harden and Irving who were chronically unreliable, and a third, Ben Simmons, who has yet to suit up for the Nets — and just kept playing at an almost unimaginably high level.

Through it all, Durant has remained, at age 33, at worst the third or fourth best basketball player on the planet, averaging 29.9/7.4/6.4 and shooting .518/.383/.910.

(One man’s list, for kicks and giggles: 1. Giannis Antetokounmpo; 2. Nikola Jokic; 3. Durant; 4. Joel Embiid. Though I’d vote Jokic for MVP.)

He has a knack for handling most things well. He may have overstepped the line a few weeks ago putting pressure on Mayor Adams to lift the mandate but that was the product of five months of pent-up frustration. He gets a mulligan for that. And for his genuine, thoughtful comments about the Brooklyn subway shooting Tuesday morning.

“It’s devastating to hear about,” Durant said Tuesday morning, following the Nets’ walk-through in anticipation of their play-in game against the Cavaliers Tuesday night at Barclays Center.

“To hear the sirens out front of the practice facility and see so much commotion going on outside, you hope and pray for the best for everybody involved.”

Durant was similarly thoughtful when he talked about the MVP race. It is inarguable that when Durant played this year he played at an MVP-level the whole way, he simply was derailed for 25-plus games by a balky knee. He acknowledges that’ll hurt his chances when the votes are soon totaled.

“If I had to choose, I would go Joel Embiid,” Durant said. “He led the league in scoring, double-doubles, his team won 50 games this year. Numbers were incredible. It’s a great year.

“But you can just close your eyes and just pick any one of the guys out of the top six or seven, and you can have a good MVP this year. That shows how great our league is right now and how talented our league is from top to bottom, but I would go with Embiid if I had to choose.”

Among those six or seven, of course, is Durant, who constantly has shaken off the various and sundry issues that have tried to subvert the Nets’ mission. He is, in truth, the main reason why the Nets still have a mission.

“I see why I’m not in that conversation,” Durant said. “But I’m sure there’s a lot of guys in the league that play MVP-caliber basketball for their clubs. That help their clubs reach heights that they probably don’t reach this year [without them], but when it comes to the whole league, there’s just so many great players playing right now, it’s hard to choose. But I can really say, it’s 10 or 12 of us maybe that can be in that conversation.

“That’s pretty cool to see that in our league.”

And comforting for Nets fans who have known, all year, that no matter what else, there is always No. 7. Not a bad thing to have a player like Durant on your side, and not someone else’s.