As Kevin Durant fought to rehab back from the strained calf he suffered in the second round of the playoffs, the Warriors put out very little public information on how his progress was going. There was no timetable for his return, no real updates of any sort. They took it game by game, usually ruling him a day or two before the Warriors were set to play before finally clearing him for Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Durant would suffer a ruptured Achilles in the second quarter of that game.
For as little info as the public had, Warriors players didn’t have much to go off, either. There were whispers that some Warriors players felt Durant should’ve come back before he did and were frustrated by a rehab process that dragged on and on. Andre Iguodala was asked about Durant’s injury saga during an appearance on The Breakfast Club Tuesday morning, and revealed a similar experience.
Iguodala sat out of the final four games of the 2018 Western Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets with what the team called a “bone bruise.” Iguodala said the injury was actually much more serious.
“We barely get out of that series, and now they’re looking at me like ‘When are you coming back?'” Iguodala said. “I had a fractured leg. But it’s being put out there like you’ve got a bone bruise. So I’m fighting with the team, I’m fighting with people and the media, and then my teammates ask me every day, ‘How are you feeling?’ So with (Durant), he’s getting it from everywhere too. Not just from the team, but from family, people close to him.”
Iguodala would return for games 3 and 4 of the 2018 NBA Finals, in which the Warriors swept the Cleveland Cavaliers, missing just a total of six games after suffering a fractured leg.
