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OAKLAND — Steve Kerr on Friday sought to clarify the status of Kevin Durant’s injury and prognosis.
Thursday night, after Warriors victory, Kerr had said the calf injury that has sidelined Durant for the past three games was “a little more serious than we thought at the very beginning.”
Friday, before the Warriors departed for Portland, Kerr drew a more nuanced picture.
“What did I say last night, that it was a little more serious than we thought?” Kerr said. “The right way to put it would be, with a calf injury, there’s kind of a wide range of how long a guy’s gonna be out. He’s had them in the past where he was out a week or 10 days but right from the beginning (head trainer) Rick (Celebrini) was telling me that you really can’t put a number of days or weeks on this.
“There’s a big range of how long it could be depending on how he responds and how bad the strain is. This one is taking a little bit longer than the ones he’s had in the past, but that’s OK. He’s coming along well and if he continues to improve at the rate he’s improving now we’re confident that he’ll be back. We just don’t know when.”
Durant has yet to resume on-court activity, but he was at Oracle Arena on Thursday, greeting his teammates in the tunnel both at halftime and after the game.
Before the Warriors’ 114-111 win on Thursday night that gave them a 2-0 series lead, the team announced Durant wouldn’t fly to Portland for Games 3 and 4. They plan to re-evaluate Durant in a week, and it seems unlikely he’ll return in the conference finals unless the Blazers prolong the series to seven games. Even then he might only return if the Warriors reach the NBA Finals.
“He’s in the training room every day. He’s around the guys. He’s actually recovering well. He’s doing well with his rehab,” Kerr said. “There’s definitely some grey area with any injury, but with a calf injury like that especially, and it’s gonna be how he responds to treatment and how his body recovers over the next days and however long it takes.”
Durant’s 34.2 points per game in the 2019 playoffs before his injury led the league, but the Warriors are 3-0 without him.
Warriors center DeMarcus Cousins, who tore his left quad early in Game 2 of the first round against the Clippers, is closer to returning to action than Durant.
The role he’ll assume upon clearance remains to be seen, but he’d provide the Warriors an additional body for their center rotation, nonetheless.
“He’s working really hard and he’s been in the training room religiously over the last month and now he’s getting out on the court, so he is ahead of Kevin in terms of the ability to get out on the court and run and really get a good basketball workout,” Kerr said. “He’s a big guy, so conditioning is tougher for big guys than guards, so he’s got to continue to work on the stuff he’s doing, which is the bike, going hard on the bike, getting sprints on the floor and when he’s ready, we’ll know he’s ready.”
