Entering this season without their two-time Finals MVP now playing for the Brooklyn Nets; one-half of their perennial All-Star “Splash Brothers” backcourt and with nine new players on the team, the five-time defending Western Conference champion and three-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors started the 2019-20 season with very little margin for error. Some said they might not even make the playoffs in the highly stacked West. Those affirmations became even more of a reality with the loss of their most significant player in the middle of this week.
In the Warriors (1-4) 121-110 loss at home versus the Phoenix Suns (3-2) on Wednesday night, two-time Kia MVP Stephen Curry sustained a broken left hand after a collision with Suns’ center Aron Baynes in the third quarter.
The six-time All-Star, according to a source told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne sustained a fracture to the second metacarpal, the bone in the third hand below the index finger after a drive to the basket ended with a collision between Curry and Baynes, who attempted to draw an offensive foul and fell on top of Curry’s left hand.
The 31-year-old underwent surgery, that was performed by Dr. Steven Shin at the Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, and the organization said that Curry will be on the shelf for at least three months but is expected to make a full recovery.
The Warriors plan to provide an update on his progress in early February, meaning that his possible return to the lineup would be with about 30 games left in this regular season.
“Just one of those things,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said after the game about Curry’s injury. “Aron Baynes came up after the game and just wanted to know how Steph was doing. You could tell he felt really bad. It was just a random basketball play, so stuff happens.”
Warriors general manager Bob Meyers told ESPN after the game that the six-time All-Star an MRI and CT scan and will determine from there if surgery will be needed and how long he will be on the shelf for.
For a team that’s without five-time All-Star Klay Thompson, whose recovering from an torn ACL in his left knee sustained in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals versus the Toronto Raptors last June; two-time Finals MVP Kevin Durant, who left the Bay Area to sign with the Brooklyn Nets in free agency this summer and center Kevon Looney, whose remains on the shelf because of neuropathic condition, Curry’s injury is their worst nightmare come true that is dealing with a rough start and major issues at the defensive end.
“Obviously it’s been a rough start for us on many levels,” Coach Kerr, whose team is now 1-3 after the loss said postgame. “So, we’re trying to find our footing. And obviously this puts us in a tough spot. So, we’ll assess it, and go from there.”
It did not get much better for the Warriors on Friday night as in their first game without their floor general they lost they suffered a 127-110 loss versus the San Antonio Spurs (4-1) to fall to 0-3 in their new digs of the Chase Center.
They not only lost their third straight game at home to start this season, their lone remaining healthy All-Star Draymond Green injured his left index finger. The Warriors officially called the injury Green sustained a sprained left index finger and it is undetermined if he will need an MRI to confirm that status. His status for playing on Saturday night versus the Charlotte Hornets is unclear.
“I hurt my finger,” Green, who was wearing a wrap over both wrist and his injured finger when he met with the press following the loss. “Ligament action. But it is what it is…I don’t know [about Saturday]; we’ll see. It’s pretty sore. I couldn’t grip the ball the whole entire [game], probably since the second quarter. Which is why I was making a lot of one-handed, right-handed passes and dribbling left with my right hand. I couldn’t really grip the ball, so we’ll see. Hopefully, it will calm down a little big overnight, but who knows?”
Right from the opening tip of this season, everyone in the Warriors organization from the front office to the coaching staff to the roster that this amazing five-year run that has seen them represent the Western Conference in the NBA Finals has reached its end. They did not speak that truth out loud because they still had Curry and Green and Coach Kerr to keep this run going possibly.
The glaring difference this season is that the Western Conference is stacked to the point that the Warriors going against the likes of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings will not be an easy task.
To bring this into fuller context, the Warriors have already lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder (1-4) earlier this season 120-92 last Sunday and their loss versus the Suns earlier this week was their second straight loss to them dating back to last season after defeating them 18 consecutive times.
Even if they made the playoffs this spring in the best-case scenario, the Warriors were going to have a quick exit in the opening-round of the 2020 postseason.
Now, the reality is setting in with the injuries to Curry and Green, and the fact again that Durant, along with 2015 Finals MVP Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston are gone from the scene and Thompson is on the shelf the Warriors can feel better in saying they are not that dominating team anymore. That the basketball gods who have been beyond words kind to them this decade took their good luck away from them and gave them a reason to use the 2019-20 NBA season as a gap year.
While it may be just the start of November, if the Warriors want to have another crack at the Larry O’Brien trophy in the years to come, Curry, Thompson and Green must be load managed beyond words the rest of this season, even if they have to put them in bubble wrap.
This course of action means the Warriors run the risk of doing the four-letter word that the basketball purists detest to their core, tank. That said, the Warriors without the “Splash Brothers” are all but guaranteed to register over 50 losses this season, even in their new home that still has that new-car smell.
The Warriors felt coming into this season with Curry and an abbreviated 2019-20 from Thompson, they were still hopeful to make the 2020 playoffs this spring and turned their nose up at even the possibility of tanking.
The issue with that is the Warriors First-Round pick in 2020 belongs to the Nets if it falls outside the Top 20 because they traded that pick in the Durant deal, where they acquired Russell. By understanding if not embracing the reality of tanking, the Warriors can keep their Hall of Fame backcourt healthy and maintain their pick, which is likely to fall in the lottery.
The Warriors have had a history of making wise selections in the draft. But it is very rare for a team with great players to add a lottery pick.
How rare? The last time this happened was with the 1996-97 San Antonio Spurs, who were fresh of back-to-back regular seasons of 59 and 62 wins the prior two seasons took a serious crash to the basement of the West when back and foot injuries to 1994-95 Kia MVP and Hall of Famer David Robinson limited him to just six games that season. When the Spurs began that season 3-15, then-general manager Gregg Popovich fired and took over for then head coach Bob Hill, going 17-47 to finish that season 20-62. The Spurs won the No. 1 overall pick in the 1997 NBA Draft lottery and chose now assistant coach and future first ballot Hall of Famer Tim Duncan and have made the postseason 22 consecutive years, winning five titles along the way, winning two of them alongside Robinson.
That season though is not lost on those still a part of the organization like former small forward for the “Silver and Black” Sean Elliott, the color analyst for FOX Sports Southwest.
“David was such a focal part of the club, that everything we did was predicated on him,” Elliott, who played just 39 games in 1996-97 said. “When you lose him, you just can’t plug in another David. It’s partly going to be a little of that without Steph Curry. He’s so much of their offense that you can’t replace that.”
The other caveat to that draft was the fact that with Duncan being that game-changing carrot out there, the tanking accusations flew not just for the Spurs, but for the Boston Celtics, who had the highest odds of winning the No. 1 overall pick that late spring at 36 percent, with their 15-67 record. Instead, the Celtics got the No. 3 and No. 6 picks.
Had the C’s won that No. 1 pick, head coach Rick Pitino might still be coaching in “Beantown.”
Elliott said during that year, the word tanking was never spoken in the Spurs’ locker room saying, “Guys were playing hard. It wasn’t that we were tanking games. It’s just everybody had more than what we had.”
What this also allows the Warriors to do now is to get a real good look at the rest of the roster in not just the aforementioned Russell, but the likes of the offseason additions in Alec Burks, Willie Cauley-Stein, Marquese Chriss, and Glenn Robinson III. The rookies in Jordan Poole, Eric Paschall and Alen Smailagic and second-year players Jacob Evans and fellow offseason addition Omari Spellman.
Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob told “The Athletic,” “…I think we’ve got a lot of good young players in place,” Warriors owner Joe Lacob told “The Athletic” near the end of this week. “Potentially, there’s a silver lining in all of this, who knows? And I’m very optimistic about our future…I think we’re going to be there at some point. Can’t say when. We’ve obviously got a lot of injuries now, but we’re going to be there.”
Coach Popovich echoed similar thoughts when he said about the approach Coach Kerr, a former Spur to take the remainder of this season, “You don’t have time to react to losing players. You continue to develop the young kids, play the way you need to play to win games but also to teach because they’re going to be there next year, for the most part. And the players who were hurt are going to come back. You can’t just stagnate. You don’t miss a beat. You just keep going.”
The five-year dynasty of the Golden State Warriors, that produced three titles and in five straight trips to the NBA Finals basically perished when Kevin Durant moved on to the Brooklyn Nets last summer and key role players in Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston either retired or were traded. Before the injury to Stephen Curry, the boys from the Bay Area tried to stay in the playoff conversation this season and if Klay Thompson returned in the early spring might have pulled a rabbit out of a hat during the postseason.
Now that both the “Splash Brothers” are on the mend for a lengthy period of time, the once-loaded Warriors have gone from the fantasy world surrounded by champagne and Larry O’Brien trophies are about to experience some serious payback by the other 29 NBA teams.
That is a hard pill to swallow when you are forced to shift your philosophy from contending to tanking and see those Larry O’Brien trophies get dusty in the trophy case and wonder what it feels like during that fall from the top of the NBA mountain.
This league is about talent and that talent of Curry, Thompson and Green got the Warriors in position to be at the top of the mountain and they reached the summit three times. Those three special talents though will not be there for now and the once-loaded Warriors are about to experience the opposite end of NBA spectrum.
At least they will do it with an understanding from the fans that will pack Chase Center, who they do not have to apologize to those long nights that are on the horizon. They can just blame the circumstances that are beyond their control.
Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 10/31/19 and 11/1/19 www.espn.com stories, “Steph Curry Suffers Broken Left Hand In Hard Fall Against Suns” and “Draymond Green Hurts Finger, Putting Playing Status In Question,” by Nick Friedell; 11/1/19 www.nba.com stories, “Warriors’ Stephen Curry (Hand) Out At Least 3 Months,” by Janie McCauley of “The Associated Press” and “Time To Face Reality For Warriors,” by Shaun Powell; https://www.espn.com/nba/team/roster/_/name/gs; https://www.espn.com/nba/team/schedule/_/name/gs; Page 126 of the Team-by-Team section, the Boston Celtics of “Official 2006-07 NBA Guide,” by Sporting News; and 11/2/19 2 a.m. edition NBATV’s “Gametime,” presented by State Farm with Chris Miles, Steve Smith, and Stan Van Gundy.
No comments:
Post a Comment