Warriors Hit Early Season Low Point as Major Injuries Loom
Going into a Wednesday night matchup against the Phoenix Suns, it seemed as though maybe things were turning around for the Warriors. The team was coming off of their first win of the season and welcoming Willie Cauley-Stein back from injury. Yes, Jacob Evans had been ruled out for at least three weeks with an adductor strain, but Kevon Looney was making progress. Besides, the team was playing at home against the Suns, who on paper have only a slightly better roster than the Warriors do. It was a great opportunity to pick up another win, or at least turn in a competitive game to give the team some confidence.
Neither of those things happened. Instead, the Warriors lost 121-110 in a game that was over early in the second quarter and saw Stephen Curry, their best player by a wide margin, break his left hand in a scary collision with Suns big man Aron Baynes.
It wasn’t just the fact that the Warriors lost. It was how bad they looked while doing it, even before Curry went down. Especially before Curry went down. Yes, the Suns played spectacularly well, but the Warriors never had any counterpunches. They looked sloppy and out of sorts on offense. Early on, they turned the ball over far too often and failed to find many good looks in terms of shooting. Defensively, they seemed careless and lazy. Rotations were slow. Assignments were missed. Players were late getting back in transition. After a lack of size wasn’t an issue in the previous game against the New Orleans Pelicans, it reared its ugly head against the Suns as the 6’10”, 260-pound Baynes went for 24 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists. The Warriors trailed by as much as 33 points. Such a deficit is bad at any point in a game. The Warriors went down by that much after a Frank Kaminsky free throw with 10:45 remaining in the second quarter.
Postgame, they’re not just dealing with their third ugly loss of the season. Curry is out for the long term. Draymond Green is banged up. Evans and Looney are both out indefinitely. The young guys, who make up most of the healthy part of the roster, simply don’t appear to have enough experience to compete with veteran NBA talent.
The most important thing out of this game, obviously, is Curry’s injury. It has major implications for the remainder of the season and the team’s on-court strategy in upcoming games.
With the starting point guard out of the picture for now, D’Angelo Russell takes over that role. We’ll likely see Steve Kerr orient the offense more towards Russell’s pick-and-roll style of play, which could give Russell and Cauley-Stein the opportunity to mesh. The young perimeter players will get bumped up in the rotations leading to more playing time and on-court development opportunities. They may struggle to win games without Curry, but these two byproducts may offer the tiniest of silver linings for the duration of the injury.
If any true positives did emerge from this game, Eric Paschall was one of them. After a solid game against the Pelicans, he gave the best performance of his young career against the Suns by scoring 20 points and posting a +19 rating. He has been the best of the rookies so far and has made the most of his opportunities.
Furthermore and more importantly, after Curry went down, it would have been easy to throw in the towel on the game. But the depleted Warriors kept fighting. They were clearly never going to overcome a 33-point deficit, but the fact that they got the eventual margin of defeat down to 11 is remarkable in and of itself.
The injury to a two-time NBA MVP and the unquestioned team leader is devastating in so many ways: on-court production, leadership, adjusting rotations and schemes. But it provides an opportunity for the team to come together and get scrappy. To fight against favored teams and compete and grind out wins for their fallen captain. If #underdogSZN wasn’t already in full swing, it certainly is now.