The Golden State Warriors overturned a 15-point deficit at halftime to beat the Portland Trail Blazers at Oracle Arena on Thursday night, and the defending NBA champions will take a 2-0 series advantage to Portland for Game 3 on Saturday. The Warriors will be without superstar Kevin Durant, who is still recovering from a right calf strain, for their two-game road trip.
Durant has been out of action since suffering the injury in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals against Houston. Many analysts and fans immediately feared that Durant may have suffered a severe Achilles injury, but the Warriors announced that an MRI confirmed that Durant had strained his calf.
Durant is not making the trip to Portland for Game 3 and 4, and Steve Kerr said after the Warriors’ victory that Durant’s injury was more severe than the team initially suspected.
“Hopefully he continues to progress, and he has made progress but it’s a little more serious than we thought at the very beginning. So we’ll see where it all goes, but he’s in there all day long getting treatment. He’s done a great job of committing himself to that process…. Hopefully he’ll be back at some point, but we’ll just wait and see.”
The good news for Golden State is that even without Durant, the Warriors still roughly resemble the squad that won 73 games without him in 2015-16. The NBA Finals will begin on May 30th, which gives Durant nearly two weeks to recover for a potential series against the Raptors or Bucks.
