Golden State Warriors' Steph Curry shoots around before the Orlando Magic game at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., Saturday, Jan. 6, 2023, as he prepares to return to game action next week. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
It keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?
The Warriors were set to go on a long-awaited run of wins — Saturday night was supposed to be the start of it.
Instead, the win over the Mavericks might be the end of the Dubs’ title defense. The loss of Steph Curry in that contest was infinitely more significant than one win.
The injury, suffered in the third quarter when Curry’s left knee bumped into the right knee of Dallas’ McKinley Wright, is expected to keep Curry out for multiple weeks, per Stadium’s Shams Charania.
With the NBA’s All-Star break coming, that could limit the number of games Curry will be sidelined. But it still puts the Warriors in a terrible spot heading into the home stretch of the season.
The injury is expected to be to Curry’s MCL. He sprained the same ligament in March 2018 and missed five weeks. That amounted to 16 games — including six playoff games.
That Warriors team was fine without Curry.
But that Warriors team had Kevin Durant, a pre-injury Klay Thompson, and prime Draymond Green.
This season’s Warriors couldn’t be further away from “ruining the league.” No, they’re a persistently .500 team that’s dependent on Curry’s greatness like it’s the Mark Jackson era.
The Warriors’ title chances depend, entirely, on how long Curry is sidelined. He will unquestionably miss the team’s five remaining games before the All-Star break. If he misses five weeks again, it will likely be 15 games missed.
That would only leave the Warriors 14 games remaining in the regular season.
How deep will the Warriors be buried when Curry returns?
Here’s some good news: the Western Conference is so tight — there’s only a two-game spread between the No. 10 seed (the last spot in the play-in tournament) and the No. 4 seed (a home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs) — that if the Warriors can tread water for the coming weeks, sans-Curry, they stand a good chance of remaining in a position to strike for good seeding upon his return.
The bad news: There’s no margin for error in the Western Conference. Anything less than .500 basketball could disqualify Golden State from playing in the postseason altogether.
The Warriors must finish in the top six of the Western Conference standings to be considered a title contender again in 2023. No champion is coming out of the play-in tournament.
They’ll enter this sans-Curry stretch holding the No. 7 seed.
So can the Warriors tread water without Curry?
The Warriors went 6-5 without Curry (shoulder injury) in December and early January. That stretch featured a huge win over the Grizzlies on Christmas, but also a weak stretch of the schedule and a seven-game homestand.
The Warriors’ remaining strength of schedule isn’t difficult, but it’s not easy, either. There’s certainly no cupcake lane on the horizon, especially when you consider that there are likely to be three back-to-backs during Curry’s absence, meaning that Thompson and perhaps Green will be sidelined.
If the Warriors are going to survive without Curry, Thompson and Green will have to play their best basketball of the season. Andrew Wiggins will need to tap into the version of himself we saw last postseason.
And Jordan Poole must become the team’s offensive engine. That means he must put his on-ball brilliance to work while avoiding being an isolation-calling turnover machine. He’ll need to embrace the Warriors’ system — they can’t win with him doing his own thing.
All of this is possible. But is it probable? Fifty games into the season, there’s not much reason to believe it is.
Oh, the Warriors will also need to expand their rotation with Curry sidelined.
As counter-productive as it might seem, the Warriors cannot afford to sit Moses Moody and James Wiseman (should either be on the roster after Thursday’s trade deadline). The Warriors are down a man — The Man — and his impact on the game cannot be replicated by several players. But with key players taking on larger roles, the team’s end-of-bench, out-of-the-rotation players will have to pick up some minutes.
To win without Curry is a massive ask from a team that has underwhelmed all season — even with the superstar.
So I’ll repeat it: this is why you don’t mess around in the NBA. The Warriors’ talent is such that they should have been building up wins for its rainy-day fund.
The rain is here, again, and the Warriors have no cushion.
The Warriors’ championship pedigree is unquestioned. This organization prides itself on fighting through adversity and being better for it.
Here’s another dose of serious adversity. You can’t say success is impossible — especially when success is merely playing .500 basketball. Hey, perhaps this is the jolt that finally wakes up this team.
But amid a season where the Warriors can’t seem to get things right, do you expect the Dubs’ best basketball to show up now that Curry is out?
I don’t.
Originally published at Dieter Kurtenbach