{"id":1310252,"date":"2019-05-13T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T05:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/warriors-durant-and-cousins-may-miss-western-conference-finals\/"},"modified":"2019-05-13T23:16:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T05:16:00","slug":"warriors-durant-and-cousins-may-miss-western-conference-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/warriors-durant-and-cousins-may-miss-western-conference-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors Durant and Cousins may miss Western Conference Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"
Golden State Warriors’ Kevin Durant, center, limps off the court during the second half of Game 5 of the team’s second-round NBA basketball playoff series against the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, May 8, 2019, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ben Margot)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OAKLAND, Calif. \u2014 Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins won\u2019t necessarily return from injuries in time to play for the Golden State Warriors during the Western Conference Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers.<\/p>\n

Durant is likely to miss at least the first two games of the best-of-seven series beginning Tuesday night at Oracle Arena. Coach Steve Kerr said after practice Monday a more extensive update on Durant\u2019s status would come Thursday once his calf injury is re-evaluated.<\/p>\n

Reserve Portland guard Rodney Hood was listed as questionable for Game 1. The team said Monday an MRI exam showed a bone bruise from the third quarter of a 100-96 Game 7 win Sunday at Denver to clinch the West semifinals. Hood, who had to be helped off the court, has contributed key minutes off the bench to help Portland reach its first conference final since 2000.<\/p>\n

Durant, the two-time reigning NBA Finals MVP leading all postseason scorers, strained his right calf during the third quarter of Game 5 against the Rockets last Wednesday and didn\u2019t travel to Houston for the Warriors\u2019 Game 6 clincher.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone needs to slow down a little bit on the Kevin stuff. He hasn\u2019t even stepped on the floor yet,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cWe\u2019ve tried to remain somewhat vague because the injury is really sort of open-ended in terms of how long he\u2019s going to need to recover. But I think in doing so people have gotten the idea that he\u2019s going to come back and be Willis Reed or something. He hasn\u2019t even stepped on the floor yet, he still has pain. There\u2019s time ahead of him on the rehab process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Bogut started in Durant\u2019s place Friday at Houston.<\/p>\n

Cousins tore his left quadriceps muscle in Game 2 of the first round against the Clippers, just his second career playoff game. He has been running and doing agility work on the court as part of his rehab and shooting in the past week but hasn\u2019t done any scrimmaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe hasn\u2019t had any live stuff on the court yet so he\u2019s not that close either,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cHopefully another week goes by and things start to get better and now we have a better prognosis. At this point we\u2019re getting ready for this series without both of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Portland was hurt going into the playoffs by the loss of center Jusuf Nurkic to a broken leg during a game against Brooklyn on March 25. The Blazers have turned instead to Enes Kanter, waived by the Knicks shortly after the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Kanter has played with a separated left shoulder since the opening round against the Thunder, but performed admirably against the physical challenge of Denver\u2019s Nikola Jokic during the semifinals.    <\/p>\n

Warriors two-time MVP Stephen Curry is still nursing a dislocated middle finger on his left, non-shooting hand, but it has been sore. The finger remained taped for practice Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely better. We\u2019ll see tomorrow, just in terms of you can\u2019t simulate contact and intensity and all that type of stuff,\u201d Curry said. \u201cDefinitely better than it felt on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

AP Sports Writer Anne M. Peterson in Portland contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

More AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/NBA<\/a> and https:\/\/twitter.com\/AP\u2014Sports<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Golden State Warriors’ Kevin Durant, center, limps off the court during the second half of Game 5 of the team’s second-round NBA basketball playoff series against the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, May 8, 2019, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ben Margot)AP | AP OAKLAND, Calif. \u2014 Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins won\u2019t necessarily return from injuries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1310252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 09:45:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}