PORTLAND, Ore. — When the Warriors arrived here to embark on the stretch run of the regular season, there was one player not on the team charter: Draymond Green, whose absence from a disc injury in his lower back reached 22 games Thursday night.
That Green hasn’t progressed to the point of traveling with the team on its first trip after the All-Star break does not bode well for an expedited return to the court, which the team has said will come “at some point” in the final stretch of the season but offered no more specifics. His missing presence in Portland served as a reminder of the Warriors’ biggest hurdle in their final 23 games, facing the prospect of playing many of them without their point forward and most important defensive asset.
As Green’s absence extends, the Warriors are left with a couple of quandaries: their standing in the Western Conference — a 1 1/2 game lead on Memphis for the No. 2 seed entering Thursday — only gets shakier the longer Green is out, and preparing for the playoffs without the lineups they hope to log critical minutes together isn’t an easy task, either.
