McCaw out 2 games with ankle injury
PHOENIX — Warriors guard Patrick McCaw will miss the next two games with a left ankle sprain before getting re-evaluated when the team returns to the Bay Area, head coach Steve Kerr said after practice Saturday.
McCaw, 21, was going up for a rebound in the waning seconds of the second quarter Friday night in New Orleans when he landed awkwardly. After standing up on his own power, he was helped to the sideline by Shaun Livingston.
X-rays on McCaw were negative. During practice Saturday at Talking Stick Resort Arena, he was seen walking with a soft cast on his left ankle. Missing were the crutches he used after Friday’s win over the Pelicans.
“It doesn’t seem that bad, but that’s one of those things where we have to see how he does after a few games,” said Kerr, whose Warriors conclude a three-game road trip with matchups Sunday against the Suns and Tuesday at Portland. “But he won’t play the next two.”
It is a setback for a player who was perhaps the biggest surprise of training camp. After leading Golden State in scoring in the Las Vegas Summer League, he averaged 8.4 points on 45.2 percent shooting from the field (40.9 percent from beyond the arc), 2.1 assists and 1.3 steals per game in the preseason.
It was enough for him to earn the final spot in Kerr’s 10-man rotation. In 19 minutes of action over the Warriors’ first two regular-season games, McCaw had five points, three assists, a block and a steal.
His absence leaves Golden State precariously thin in the backcourt. Outside of starters Stephen Curry and Klay
Thompson, Kerr’s available guards are Ian Clark and Livingston. Small forward Andre Iguodala can also play in the backcourt if necessary.
“We just have to make do,” Kerr said. “It means that, no matter what happens, whether it’s close, whether it’s a blowout either direction, we’re going to have some guys on the floor at the end of the game that otherwise might not be.” Barbosa reunion: Sunday’s game in Phoenix marks the first time that guard Leandro Barbosa will face the Warriors since he signed a two-year, $8 million deal with the Suns in July.
“We miss LB, he’s the best,” Kerr said of Barbosa, who was a spark plug off the bench for Golden State the past two seasons. “We were happy for him that he got the contract here. We were selfishly hoping he’d come back to us, but he got a much better deal here financially.”
Barbosa has yet to crack the rotation in his third career stint with Phoenix. After Barbosa played three minutes in the Suns’ season-opening loss Wednesday to the Kings, head coach Earl Watson told the Arizona Republic that he had temporarily replaced Barbosa and P.J. Tucker on the second unit with Tyler Ulis and Dragan Bender.
“To me, they play with the most heart,” Watson said of Ulis and Bender. “Heart gets rewarded.”