NBA Rumors: Warriors’ Draymond Green targeting a March 14 return

NBA Rumors: Draymond Green is reportedly targeting a March 14 return for the Golden State Warriors. 

Through the first half of the season, the Golden State Warriors were arguably the best team in the league. Then, in January, for a myriad of reasons, they began to fall back to earth (so to speak). Part of that was a regression to the mean, but another part of that was having to battle injury and unavailability due to health and safety protocols.

Over their last 11 games, the Warriors are just 2-9 and are truly struggling.

The hope is that help is on the way for the Warriors, in the way of a return from Draymond Green who has been out of the team’s lineup since the beginning of January. Draymond says, however, that he’s hoping to make a return on March 14.

Battling the back injury, Draymond has missed the Warriors’ last 26 games. During the span, the Warriors are just 13-13. He was clearly missed in the lineup and will need to be as close to 100 percent if the Warriors are going to make a deep playoff run.

And the hope is that he’ll return next week and still have a few weeks to work his way back to 100 percent (if that’s even possible).

The Warriors have fallen a half-game back of the Memphis Grizzlies and are third in the Western Conference standings. And they don’t have much wiggle room as the Utah Jazz are just 2.5 games back of the Warriors and the Dallas Mavericks are just three games back.

Golden State is going to need to finish the regular season strong in order to hold onto the second or third seed. And that will be imperative if they want to avoid the Phoenix Suns until the conference finals.

It’ll be interesting to see how Draymond looks in his return. If he is back to his old self, there’s no question that the Warriors should be able to work their way back to contender status. However, if he isn’t fully healthy, it could further complicate Golden State’s championship chances.