A lot of Phoenix Suns fans want to know when Jalen Green will play after he was ruled out upon aggravating his hamstring injury in the middle of the game against the Atlanta Hawks. The 23-year-old guard left at the beginning of the third quarter after only playing roughly four minutes in the game due to “precautionary right hamstring tightness.”
This prevented the guard from making his return to the court for the Suns matchup against the Miami Heat on Sunday, January 25, where the team lost 111-102. During this NBA season, Green missed 33 consecutive games because of his persistent leg injury and left with his current injury only two games into his return. Fortunately, we have good news on Jalen Green’s potential return to the court.
Green could return to Suns lineup sooner than later
There is a possibility that Jalen Green could participate in the match against the Nets on Tuesday, January 27, according to reporter Duane Rankin for The Arizona Republic on X (formerly Twitter).
“If Jalen Green responds well to Sunday workout,” Rankin wrote, “[he] could return as early as Tuesday vs. Nets.”
In a pregame statement on Sunday, per AZCentral, Suns head coach Jordan Ott shared a positive update on the 23-year-old’s injury.
“MRI came back, nothing new,” the coach revealed. “That’s great news for us.”
After sharing that Green was capable of working out with his coaches on Sunday morning, Ott continued, “He’s in a good place. There’s going to be some of this where he feels something that doesn’t feel quite right. Then once the imaging comes back, there’s nothing new, I think that just eases all of our minds. He’s in a good place. Hopefully we’ll see him back.”
“When he’s ready to play and he feels good, he’ll be back out there. He’s been out for a while. So he’s going to have to learn his body and he wants to be sure, too.”
Specifically, Green is “day-to-day” when it comes to whether he will be available to play. When he does return to the court, it is expected that the guard will not be starting the game, as the Suns want to be cautious about him potentially aggravating his injury further. Despite this being the first season Green has been with the Suns, he has missed a large portion of this NBA season due to a right hamstring strain that occurred during training camp, which has already flared up several times during the preseason and the regular season.
That said, Ott is aware that Green needs to more experience on the court to make a full comeback.
“He’s not going to start. He’s coming off the bench,” Ott said, per Sports Illustrated. “It’s just those target number of competitive minutes got to go up.”
“We need him at the end of games. So to try to manage that the best we can at this point, it’s best to just bring him off the bench, but whatever minutes he’s out there, we know we’re fortunate to have a healthy group. Talked to the guys yesterday, like end of games is going to be tough. We’ve got a lot of really good players. A lot of big decisions. And we’ve played well. A lot of that stuff, we’re going to have some feel and some grace as we go through this.”
The head coach admitted during a conference that the Suns have had a difficult time with half-court stalling with both Green and Devin Booker being absent. “It’s hard. You feel helpless to be honest with you at times. Felt it in Atlanta when they really got into us. We went a little bit w/o a traditional 5 tonight. We ended up getting there, but you’re just looking for a gap. You’re looking for a gap to get into the paint to then spray out. We just weren’t able to crack that gap.”
