Injury drains life from new season
call it.
Only this cruel world includes no Kevin Durant, no Klay Thompson, no Andre Iguodala, no Shaun Livingston. And now no Curry. Gulp. This quickly, four games into the season, it’s already time to reassess the landscape. The Warriors can’t play defense and they just lost one of the best offensive players ever, a twotime Most Valuable Player.
Peer into the future, Warriors fans, and picture a lottery pick and Thompson joining the fray in time for the 202021 season. There, does that help?
Curry drove to the basket early in the third quarter, took a nasty fall and stayed on the court for several seconds. He finally got up, slowly, and held his left hand (or wrist) in obvious pain. Curry soon departed for the locker room.
Wednesday night’s game was disastrous even before Curry went down. The Warriors trailed 4314 after one quarter. The deficit soon reached 34 points, amid a smattering of boos in the upper reaches of Golden State’s sparkling, new home. That didn’t take long. Before Curry’s injury, Golden State’s biggest problem had been a curious aversion to playing defense. The Warriors allowed 141, 120 and 123 points in their first three games. And then the Suns came out and sailed through the lane for wideopen layups and drained uncontested 3point shots.
In the first half, the Warriors looked more like a hapless high school team than a franchise fresh off one of the most triumphant five years in NBA history.
Here’s how bad it was: Draymond Green’s evercandid mom, Mary Babers Green, couldn’t contain herself on Twitter. “I didn’t think we would be good but DANGGGGG I didn’t think we would be this bad!” she tweeted at one point.
Then she added, “love my guysWIN OR LOSE! Wait who are these guys again! J/k lol”
Look, it’s no surprise the Warriors lost three of their first four games. They had only two proven NBA scorers in Curry and D’Angelo Russell. They had only one exceptional defensive player in Green. They were always going to need Herculean efforts from those three players, and then bigger contributions than expected from several others.
But the way the Warriors looked in this 13 start is unnerving, to say the least.
Curry and Green appeared dazed and confused in the first quarter, as the Suns flew away on a 210 run (which later reached 301). It looked like Curry felt as if he needed to do everything by himself on offense, which led to forced shots and sloppy turnovers.
On the other end, it looked like Green was trying to do everything by himself on defense. He understandably struggled against much bigger Phoenix center Aron Baynes, and Green didn’t get much help from his teammates. Or any help.
No question, Kevon Looney’s absence hurts this team. Looney does the little, unnoticed things that lead to wins — setting sturdy screens, forcing opponents into bad shots, corralling lots of rebounds.
Looney will miss at least the next three games with a right hamstring injury and neuropathic condition. That doesn’t bode well.
Warriors diehards can find a slice of solace in their team’s spirited secondhalf effort Wednesday night, which made the final score semirespectable. Willie CauleyStein contributed 12 points and five rebounds in his Golden State debut.
To punctuate the firsthalf misery, Green hurt his back with 1:57 left before intermission, apparently after taking an elbow from one Suns player. Green complained to referee Curtis Blair and earned a technical foul, his first of the new season.
Green came back to play to start the second half. He soon retreated to the end of the bench, with ice strapped to his back. Green occasionally stood up to cheer a good play by one of his young teammates.
Even so, Green is all alone now, the only healthy player with direct ties to the five consecutive Finals trips and three championships. He probably figured this was going to be a long season. Now he knows it will be really long.