Nets' James Harden 'very confident' he'll return from injury before playoffs

Nets superstar James Harden has not played since April 5, as he suffered a setback during his rehab process from a hamstring injury on April 20 and has remained on the sidelines.

With the regular season winding down, Harden spoke to reporters on Thursday and addressed his status for the rest of the season and playoffs.

"I feel really good, just trying to get my conditioning back," Harden said via Zoom. "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 is confident that he'll return for the playoffs, and could even get some regular season action in, despite missing the last 13 games.

"Very, very confident," Harden said. "I guess the mark that I have to hit is the work that I did today, and have a couple of those without any feeling. That's pretty much the mark. I'm very confident that I'll be back before postseason.

"That's the plan, the plan is to hopefully get an opportunity to play a couple of games before the postseason. We're just taking it one day at a time, I'm just going to leave it at that."

Prior to playing just four minutes on April 5 against the Knicks before reaggravating the injury, Harden was averaging 26.1 points, 11.2 assists, and 8.9 rebounds per game since joining the Nets.

Brooklyn is currently second in the Eastern Conference standings with a 43-23 record, just two games behind the Philadelphia 76ers and one ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks.