The Warriors got a bit of bad news before the preseason.
Draymond Green sprained his left ankle after landing on Jonathan Kuminga’s foot while playing pick-up and is expected to be out for a few weeks. According to the Warriors, he will be re-evaluated two weeks from Monday, which is about a week before the team’s opener on Oct. 24.
Green spoke about the incident on Monday at Warriors Media Day, and arrived for the press conference without crutches or a walking boot. That’s a good sign. As is the fact that Green said it’s “improving fast”, although athletes diagnosing their own injury timetables should always be taken with a huge grain of salt.
“I feel good,” Green said. “I feel like I’m improving fast. I’m a pretty fast healer. It’s good. Didn’t quite foresee this coming into the season but everything happens for a reason. I think I’m excited because we have a great performance team and I’ll be in even better shape when I start playing than I even am in now with our performance team. So it’s an opportunity for me to get better and improve on some things that I’ve been working on. When the time is there, get back out there and be ready to go and hit the ground running.”
Ironically, Kuminga is the player most likely to slot in in place of Green, but it’s unclear if he’d move into the starting lineup, or if they’d go small with a Chris Paul-Stephen Curry backcourt. Maybe they won’t have to, and Green will be ready three weeks from now.
Either way, it’s not the best news, but early signs are that a crisis has been averted.
