Depleted Warriors get even more depleted, drop fourth in a row

The Warriors put some fear into the Minnesota Timberwolves, but reached a new low point as Al Horford, Quinten Post, and Seth Curry all face injuries. LET'S GET INTO IT!

Sixteen years ago, at the very end of Steph’s rookie campaign, the depleted and terrible 2010 Warriors found themselves unable to field an NBA roster. At the last game of the season, the team had exactly six healthy players, below the minimum of eight. To get around the league rules, Coach Don Nelson had the injured Ronny Turiaf and Anthony Morrow dress for the game, despite being totally unable to play, a convenient fiction to avoid the first forfeited game in NBA history.

But six players is enough to get through an NBA game, especially for a bad team on the last day of the season going through the motions. As long as you’re actually able to have five on the floor, the league can’t second-guess coaching decisions regarding playing time (as we’ve seen with the tanking crisis). Five minutes into the game, Warriors forward Chris Hunter — a then-D-Leaguer and current head of basketball operations for University of Michigan, good for you, Chris! — came up limping and had to leave. Okay, five players. Still doable. Steph Curry, Monta Ellis, Anthony Tolliver, and Reggie Williams all played 48 minutes, and Devean George played the next 42 after Hunter went down.

This turned from a crisis to an NBA historical footnote when Devean George got his sixth foul in the fourth quarter. With no healthy backup, Nelson was forced to employ the fine print in the NBA rules — you can play a player after he has six fouls if and only if he is the only eligible player left. But for some reason, the referees decided that “can barely walk” isn’t the same thing as “ineligible to play” and refused to let George back in the game. After a five-minute argument, Nelson was forced to put Hunter back in the game instead. Hunter came back out for a minute, did his best, but was fully unable to move and was putting himself at risk by playing at all.

Another time-out and five-minute argument ensued. The Portland crowd was about to riot — they hadn’t been told about the situation and just saw Nelson stopping play to yell at the referees for ten minutes after an obvious foul during the last game of the season. It was about 110 decibels of constant booing.

The referees, just to be extra sure, forced Nelson to put the injured Ronny Turiaf into the game. Okay. Turiaf came onto the floor, immediately fouled someone, said that he was injured, and came off the floor. Then Anthony Morrow came out, immediately fouled someone, said he was injured, and came off the floor. Fifteen minutes after his sixth foul, Devean George was finally allowed to come back after the refs were adequately satisfied that, yes, the Warriors really were that injured.

That game in Portland gets cited as the end of a truly bleak time in Warriors history, set up in contrast to how the rest of the decade would go. I would disagree with that being the last true low point — the Steph ankle injuries in 2012 made me feel way worse than a farce of a game that the Warriors would actually end up winning. But it’s the sort of comical and bizarre stuff that was happening before the dynasty started, that made the Warriors the joke of the league before they started putting terror in the hearts of men.

Now, with the dynasty over and only a faint glimpse of hope on the horizon, the Warriors are headed back to that stage. The team, already excessively injured coming into last night’s game, faced an absurd series of blows that are putting them at risk of repeating April 14.

The Warriors entered this game with 14 healthy players (Draymond Green was a late scratch pre-game, so if you lump him in, the Warriors had 15 healthy players yesterday morning). After 48 minutes of game time, the Warriors were left with 10 — two of whom, Kristaps Porzingis and De’Anthony Melton, are on the Rick Celebrini management plan of being strictly limited and perpetually game-to-game, and three of whom are on two-way G-League contracts.

While writing, the Warriors have just signed center Ömer Yurtseven from the G-League to a ten-day contract to give them an extra body and avoid a risk of forfeiture, but this is still a team that is about as decimated and limited as I can remember following since that 2010 season. Eleven players, including two huge health question marks, three two-ways, and a 10-day contract. At least the 2019-20 Warriors could field a full rotation.

I was hopeful when the game started — sometimes you can still see the ghost of what this team could have been given a little bit of luck. I really liked the starting lineup of Podziemski, Melton, Santos, Horford, and Porzingis. Is it a championship-level starting five? Well, the frontcourt won a championship in 2024, but no. But it’s balanced, big, and more than competent on both defense and offense. All five players could play major roles on competing teams. There are no stars, but it’s a well-put-together group that could easily get to .500 with some health luck.

I’m letting myself get tricked by Porzingis a little bit: right now his defense looks a little shaky given his reputation (with the health weirdness and the new team, I’m giving him some grace — he gets caught out on the perimeter too much and blown past when he should be at the rim, but that’s a game-plan issue and can also be solved by having him play with Draymond), but the offense has been revelatory. Even at the best of times, this Warriors team could get bogged down on offense. They would impotently pass around the perimeter, probe, and fail to get anything through for minutes at a time, especially with Steph off the court. But with Porzingis, I feel very confident about this group’s offensive capabilities. There’s always an outlet to get something going, just because you have a huge guy who can both shoot and bully his way into the post to get something easy.

His touch around the rim in particular has surprised me: I don’t remember that being advertised as part of the Porzingis package. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s been so long since the Warriors had an offense-first center that I’ve forgotten what that looks like. In the four games of the Porzingis era, I haven’t been concerned about those droughts whatsoever when he’s on the floor.

But after four minutes of feeling good about this squad, the car fell apart again. Al Horford strained his calf and would not return. Okay, more Quinten Post minutes — I can survive that. In the second quarter, Quinten Post sprained his ankle and didn’t emerge from the locker room after halftime. In the morning, the Warriors had four healthy centers. By halftime, they had one, and it’s a player with more health question marks than maybe anyone in basketball.

Seth Curry would come in the first rotation, but would leave with an adductor strain after taking a hard fall in a struggle for a loose ball. Now we’re down to eight active players. The lack of available bodies led to a photo I’m sure will be how I remember this season years down the line: after halftime, Steph Curry and Pat Spencer sat alone on a deserted bench, looking downtrodden and tired.

There have been a bunch of these games lately where the Warriors simply didn’t have the talent or the bodies to compete with a more complete and talented team, and to give the players and Steve Kerr a huge amount of credit, they always compete. This has been consistent since the night Jimmy Butler went down — Kerr is able to squeeze an absurd amount of effort and spirit out of a team that should be demoralized. After going down 25 in the third quarter, the Warriors rattled off a 25-9 run in which 7’3” Kristaps Porzingis and 6’2” Gary Payton II traded off center duties.

The Wolves are in a vibes crisis too, despite being on paper one of the most talented teams in the Western Conference. They came into this game on a three-game losing streak, and for a moment looked completely rattled by a hot shooting stretch from Podziemski and Santos. What ostensible contender looks at a team that needs to play Malevy Leons 14 minutes in a half and gets scared? The Warriors cut the lead to eight and Chase Center rocked like it was Oracle circa 2015.

Alas: it’s not Oracle and it’s not 2015. The Warriors have no stars right now, and the Wolves do, and that matters when it comes to the end of a game. Anthony Edwards looked reengaged as the clock wound down in the fourth quarter, and was able to beat that feisty lineup of G-League veterans back. There’s a limit to what belief and effort can get you in this league, and the Warriors are running up against it constantly. Their two best healthy players are strictly minutes-limited and there’s no way around it.

But, as I’ve written before, my expectations for this season have changed. You can hold it against a talented and whole team when they look slow and unenergized (if I were a Rockets fan right about now, I’d be writing strongly-worded letters). You can’t really hold it against anyone when a team this decimated is beaten back by Anthony Edwards.

Maybe the Warriors can make a run and get a playoff series. It’s looking less likely every day, but the only thing that really matters are those play-in games in April. Maybe they can’t, and we’ll be praying to Adam Silver to get us a consolation prize in the draft. No one likes to go into a season with championship hopes and come out of it with a 10% chance at a top-four pick, and as we well know the draft is a crapshoot: the reward for the aforementioned injury-riddled 2009-10 season was Ekpe Udoh! But the next year, after a similarly disgusting season of basketball, the Warriors walked away with Klay Thompson for their trouble.

But again, I’m looking for things to hold onto and look forward to. If that’s Porzingis resurrecting his career, Gui Santos emerging, the G-Leaguers establishing themselves, the draft, embarrassing the Rockets, five glorious games of Steph Curry basketball — I can deal with it. The Warriors are being buffeted by fate right now, but there’s nothing new under the sun.