It has now been one full month since James Harden last took the floor with the Nets, and with the playoffs fast approaching, the star guard believes he will be back from his hamstring injury in time for the postseason, when Brooklyn is expected to make a serious push for an NBA title.
"Very, very confident," Harden said when asked about his outlook to return in time for the playoffs. "I guess the mark I have to hit is the work that I did today, to have a couple of those without any feeling. That's pretty much the mark. But I'm very confident that I'll be back for the postseason."
That work that Harden did included conditioning drills to work his way back to game strength after suffering a setback to his hamstring injury on April 20. Harden was initially expected to be back weeks ago, but he has now missed the last 15 games.
"I feel really good, just trying to get my conditioning back," Harden said. "Just change of speeds, change of direction, making sure the power and quickness is there to be able to move how I move. So far so good, today was really good and we just have to keep building on that."
Harden's lingering hamstring injury is reminiscent of what teammate Kevin Durant went through earlier this season, suffering what he thought was a minor injury before further tests revealed something more, causing Durant to miss two months of action. Due to Durant and Harden's injuries and Kyrie Irving's multiple personal leaves from the team, Brooklyn's star trio has played just seven games together so far.
Despite the lack of playing time as a group, Harden isn't worried about a lack of chemistry getting in the way of the Nets run towards a championship.
"Not an issue at all," Harden said. "I think one of the things a lot of teams don't have is talent. We don't have to worry about that aspect. We can control the rebounding and the screening, we can watch film and get better at that. But skill-wise, we're elite. I'm not worried at all."
The Nets' chances at reaching the Finals would obviously be much greater with Harden on the floor, as he was putting up MVP caliber numbers since being traded from the Rockets. In 34 games with Brooklyn, he is averaging 25.4 points and 11.0 assists per game.
The Nets have six games left in the regular season and are still fighting for playoff seeding, still two games back of the top seed and one game ahead of Milwaukee for the second seed.
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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