Warriors are hardly alone in missing top player or two

You can barely see it from here. There’s too much clutter in the path to a Golden State Warriors championship, too many signs that it just won’t happen this time around.

Rest assured, the rest of the NBA doesn’t view it that way. Nor does this column, eternally bound to a simple proclamation: No team can match Golden State at playoff time if Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson are on the court together.

If that sounds a bit starryeyed for the current climate, true enough. The thing to remember, though, is that the Warriors’ dismantled state is a microcosm of the league in general. I wouldn’t bet on any team putting together a fivegame winning streak, not with injuries and the absurd “load management” strategy so disturbingly prevalent.

Think about it: When was the last time you watched or attended an NBA game and all 10 starters were actually on the floor? The game is no more physical than it was in the 1960s, but it’s such an above-therim affair, great athletes crashing to the floor with a risky outcome, serious injuries are more commonplace than ever before. As dangerous as the Phoenix Suns look at times, they’ve had their starting five together for just 67 minutes all season.

Toss in the popular notion of, “Hey, let’s disappoint the fans tonight,” and you realize that Tuesday night’s commitment might be Thursday night’s ruse. The Warriors recently decided to bench the Big Three and Andrew Wiggins in a game at New Orleans. The Brooklyn Nets were fined $25,000 by the league Thursday for sitting eight players — including Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving — against Indiana on Dec. 10. Good luck trying to catch the Clippers with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George in play. They’re likely to be in street clothes, feeling fine but, you know, resting for later.

Not everyone buys into this nonsense, but there aren’t enough Devin Bookers to stem the tide. Booker recently had to miss a few games with a balky hamstring, but in essence, “I’m not part of that,” the Phoenix guard told the Athletic. “I spend a lot of time in the summer making sure my body’s right to be able to take that load on, so I want to be out there, and I want to win basketball games and do what I have to do to help the team. That’s just how I’ve always been.

“And I haven’t lost sight of those kids that are up in the stands that might be seeing me for the first time. … A kid grows up and is like, ‘Man, I want to be Devin. I want to dress like him. I want to play like him.’ I’ve never lost sight of that.”

The reality of the Western Conference is that as long as the

Warriors stay close to .500 in Curry’s absence — he is out indefinitely with a shoulder injury — they’ll have a clear vision of making the playoffs. “I’m not concerned about anybody in the West,” Green said last week, noting that he has “appropriate fear” of certain teams, “but I don’t worry about anybody. I know if we play our game, nobody’s beating us.”

Absolutely — but for all the uncertainty about the Warriors’ secondary players, two larger issues are at play. Jordan Poole hasn’t been himself all season — venturing too often into wild improvisation, missing too many open shots, a bit less reliable from the free-throw line — and that needs to change as he assumes a lot of Curry’s responsibility.

As for Green realizing what it means to draw a technical foul, don’t bet on it. He’s never going to understand that. Granted, today’s players get hit up for nothing: a stare, a shout, a clap of the hands — and the league’s officiating headquarters should be ashamed. But far too often, Green can’t let it go. His temper blinds him. He rants and raves, gets back in the ref ’s face, and of course he gets that second technical and ejection. Totally deserves it. Way to help the team.

There was a far more inspiring Warriors moment at Minnesota last month after Green drew a totally undeserved technical for cheering on his teammates. Curry, also on the bench at the time, responded by intentionally making a spectacle of himself: leaping around and running underneath the basket, making sure

drew a T and the episode’s farcical nature would be fully exposed.

That was all about solidarity, having your teammate’s back, and it’s a powerful image that won’t vanish anytime soon. With Curry likely to be gone for quite some time, we’ll see if the Warriors’ fabled “culture” has staying power.

A born leader

When the 20-year-old Carlos Correa arrived at the Houston Astros’ camp in 2015, teammates were startled by the rookie’s maturity. “I think he’s going to be one of the best,” said second baseman Jose Altuve of the shortstop who joined the San Francisco Giants last week. “He really young, but I think we all have to learn from him.”

The ensuing weeks brought revelations about Correa’s background in Santa Isabel, a town on Puerto Rico’s southern coast. His father, Carlos Sr., was known as “24-7” for his fierce dedication to supporting his family: starting a construction job at 4:30 a.m., working maintenance for the town’s recreation department for six hours in the middle of the day, then returning later for another construction shift. But from 8:30 to 10:30 every night, he’d take Carlos to a ragged baseball field and run him through drills.

“Seven, eight years old, I’m taking hundreds of grounders and hundreds of swings,” he told Sports Illustrated. “My father never treated me like a little boy. He wanted me to be like him: a man at a young age who could go out and work for his family.”

Realizing that a number of Hispanic players spoke to the American media through an interpreter, Correa asked his parents to enroll him in a bilingual school so he would become fluent in English. He had no interest in night life, drank only an occasional glass of wine or Champagne, and resisted the notion of moving to Florida — an option chosen by countrymen Francisco Lindor and Javier Baez — to advance his development. “I want to come out of Puerto Rico,” he said. “I want to show people it can be done from here.”

Even as his legend grew in the major leagues — a player who had all the tools and truly wanted to be that guy on the Astros — he returned to Santa Isabel in the offseasons. As the story goes, he got permission each winter to use a local field for nighttime batting drills — not just for himself, but for the hundreds of kids and their families who wanted to watch. And every night, without fail, he stayed to sign autographs until the last request was filled.

It’s a special man the Giants are getting, and you wonder if there’s ever been a more radical change in baseball than this: Before the invasion of agents and free agency, players met face-to-face with club executives to determine the amount of their next contract — usually just one year. Either you made your case or you took a pay cut.

To stay competitive in today’s market, the Giants had to commit $350 million to Correa for an unfathomable 13 years. Bereft of superstars since Buster Posey’s retirement, wanting to resurrect the climate that surrounded Madison Bumgarner and Tim Lincecum and Barry Bonds, they thought they had to pull the trigger. And they were correct. Correa will be worth the price.