5 reasons Kevin Durant’s leg injury isn’t all bad for Warriors
Bummed out about Durant’s injury absence? Here are 5 ways a bad knee can be a good thing
Five reasons Kevin Durant’s leg injury will be a good thing, in the final analysis:
The NBA season got saved:
If you stuck your nose right onto the oil painting, the Warriors had some flaws. Their defense can get lazy, Stephen Curry’s shooting can go into the deep-freeze, and so on.
But if you stepped back five paces, you saw a masterpiece, a team clearly destined to win the NBA championship.
This tended to dampen enthusiasm around the league. Twenty-nine teams were slogging it out for consolation prizes, taking turns playing stooge to the Golden State Globetrotters.
Now the Warriors are almost mortal (see: Tuesday’s loss to Wizards). With Durant sidelined a month or more, the Warriors no longer have a free ride to glory.
Bye-bye, goody-goody:
Hello, Matt Barnes. The job of team security men Ralph Walker and Terrance West just got more interesting. Barnes is no shut-in. His latest off-court brush with fun came this season, in a nightclub mini-brawl involving at least a couple of women.
Barnes is likely to be on his best behavior, realizing his fantastic shot at a diamond ring, but he’s not the type of guy who unwinds from a hard day’s work by hitting the malt shop.
On the court, Barnes has a playing style that Dr. Naismith didn’t anticipate. Barnes knows how to set an adult-type screen, and the Warriors are Screens R 1
Us. It just got harder for opponents to clutch and grab Curry and Klay Thompson.
A Warriors official told me a couple of years ago that the team turned the corner when a toplevel decision was made to phase out players who like to party. That has been a plan that worked beautifully, but sometimes you adjust for reality.
Maybe when Barnes steps out for an evening of relaxation, the Warriors can send Draymond Green with him, to keep things cool. Tom Brady Syndrome: Brady sat out the first four games of the NFL season on suspension and returned to work rested and rarin’. How did he look in the second half of the Super Bowl?
Durant, assuming his recovery is smooth, has saved himself a month of hard pounding.
This is a rough league. In Tuesday’s game, the Warriors got pinballed by the frisky Washington Wizards. Zaza Pachulia, as sturdy as a redwood, was knocked to the hardwood several times, once by a mighty karate chop upside his head. Curry went down after one collision and stayed down for an eight-count, and on another drive to the hoop, he wound up thudding into the padded basket-support structure. Shaun Livingston twisted an ankle.
It’s an adventure out there in the NBA. Players get hurt nightly. Even with Durant’s injury, the Warriors have been one of the league’s most fortunate teams.
Durant’s injury was not a horrible bad break; it was just another night at the office. Opportunity knocks: For the Warriors, the next 14 games or so are a chance to show (or remind) the league what kind of grit and talent they’ve got. Two of those games are against the Spurs, in San Antonio.
Come through that stretch with 10 wins, including at least one over the Spurs, and the Warriors will have made a statement. Opportunity knocks, II: Durant was playing 33.6 minutes per game. Barnes will not get all those minutes.
Maybe Kerr will put Patrick McCaw in Durant’s starting spot. Regardless, McCaw, Ian Clark, James Michael McAdoo and others will get more time in the spotlight.
The result should be a deeper and sharper team for the playoffs. No coffee needed: Remember those occasional nights when the Warriors don’t seem to have a full tank of enthusiasm and concentration? Those nights are going to be rare for the next month.
Last season, the Warriors were chasing a win record, but that’s off the table this season, so motivation down the stretch was going to be a challenge. Now, not so much. No danger of the Warriors going into the playoffs with a dull edge.
With the Warriors at full strength, some opponents down the stretch might have phoned it in. If Gregg Popovich saw no chance of the Spurs grabbing the No. 1 playoff seed, he might have rested half his team against the Warriors. Less likely now.
Until Tuesday night, this season was destined to end in predicted victory. Now, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are fumbling with the envelope.