Doctor explains Draymond’s calf injury, Warriors return timeline originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
How soon could Warriors veteran Draymond Green return from his calf injury? Well, it depends.
Golden State’s star forward will be re-evaluated in one week after sustaining a mild left calf strain in Sunday’s 122-114 win over the Washington Wizards, and Stanford Medicine’s Marc Safran, M.D., emphasized the need for patience with an injury like Green’s.
“We grade calf strains as a low grade, mild grade and then a severe calf strain,” Safran told NBC Sports Bay Area’s Bonta Hill on Monday. “And understand the calf is the is the muscle, and the injury is actually where the muscle pulls away a little bit from the tendon. Muscles attach to bone by a tendon. In all actuality downstream, the tendon that is doing the attachment of the calf muscle is the Achilles. We all know about Achilles injuries, and if you rupture the Achilles, that’s usually a six-month recovery.
“Calf strains can take anywhere from two weeks to about three months to recover, and generally the recovery is very good, full recovery, though if you try to rush people back from any type of muscle strain, there is a higher propensity to recur.”
Safran told Hill that typically, mild calf strains require a two-week recovery at most, and some return to action after as little as one week. But given Green’s previous calf injuries during the 2024-25 NBA season, the Warriors won’t be rushing him back if his anything is off in his one-week re-evaluation.
In the worst-case scenario for a mild calf strain, Safran shared Green could miss as much as six weeks. But there’s plenty of reason for Dub Nation to be optimistic Green only will miss four games across the next seven days.
“It depends on the severity of of the injury,” Safran told Hill. “If they’re calling it mild and are expecting one to two weeks, that’s probably what it’s going to end up being about. Again, this is the type of injury Kevin Durant had. He was out for just over two weeks in November. Though, again, if it’s really severe, like Luka Dončić has reportedly a calf strain, and he’s been out now for a month or so.
“So it can vary, but from the sounds of it and from the way it looked when he was walking off the floor, I think two weeks is probably a good a good number to start with.”
While the Warriors hung on to beat the Wizards after Green left with the calf injury in the first quarter, they were blown out by the Boston Celtics on Monday at Chase Center without the former NBA Defensive Player of the Year. And as Golden State looks to get back on track, the task certainly will be a lot easier with Green back on the floor.
