Doomed to lose or not: Scrappy, low-budget Warriors are fun

Porzingis out for upcoming back-to-back - more adventure awaits!

The Golden State Warriors aren’t dumb. They know that playing without Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler is an enormous obstacle, and that wins are going to be exceedingly hard to come by. But for those still watching, what’s left of this team has been playing inspired basketball.

Tonight begins a two night back-to-back swing through the South, with a quick stop tonight in New Orleans to face the weirdly bad Pelicans, and then a rebuilding Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday. Two winnable games, even with all the injuries.

And on the injury front, sounds like Kristaps Porzingis has caught that nasty flu floating around the Bay Area lately. As per reporting yesterday, he didn’t even travel with the team - and now a trio of key veterans is listed as questionable.

This puts even more pressure on the remaining frontcourt since Al Horford (who was huge in the team’s previous win) will only appear in one of these next two games as part of his injury management regime.

On the Pelicans side, Trey Murphy is out with a shoulder injury. It could get interesting for New Orleans, as Murphy is one of the few shooters on their squad.¹

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GAME DETAILS

WHO: Golden State Warriors (30-27) at New Orleans Pelicans (16-42)

WHEN: Tuesday, February 24th, 2026; 5pm PST

WATCH: NBCSBA

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Are these tickets still full price?

The Warriors have a weird roster. Cobbled together with a ton of value bin signings, this Golden State team could only do so much around the core of Curry ($59 mil), Butler ($54 mil), and Green ($26 mil), there was never much additional money to go around. Throw in the newly acquired Porzingis at $30 million, and you’ve got around $170 million dollars sitting out - and yet somehow Golden State managed to beat a top tier Denver Nuggets team like that.

That’s around 70% of the team’s entire salary, and in a league that is largely defined by which squad has the best player on the court, it’s easy to wonder how long these scrappy remnants can stay competitive. And while yes, that is certainly a valid question, it doesn’t feel like it matters much in the near term. This is a roster that is going to hustle, play as a cohesive unit, and live with the results, come what may after four quarters.

In their win over the Nuggets, it wasn’t like the Nuggets just rolled over and handed the game to Golden State. Nikola Jokic had a massive night, a 25 point, 20 rebounds and 12 assist triple-double - his fifth such achievement in his team’s last seven games. And it still wasn’t enough. No Curry, no Butler, no Green (though his positive impacts have been diminished this season, he’s still missed) and still Golden State came out with the win.

The Warriors had seven players in double digits, a remarkable feat in any circumstance, made only more impressive by the absence of the team’s top talent.

I’ve been covering this team for over a decade now, writing my way through the highs and lows of a franchise that broke multiple ceilings and has continued to find relevance, if perhaps not maintaining that elite edge. One of the strangest truths is that it’s a ride that can quickly lose the interest of the general population quickly; and the dedicated fan base may not be far behind. But waning interest isn’t a deal breaker for fandom, and it seems as if whatever this roster is right now, it’s fun.

There’s a gleeful recklessness at the heart of this team. No Curry or Butler. Green fading into sunset. The next biggest acquisition, Porzingis is going to remain a work in progress. The only thing left is a sort of desperation that you normally don’t see across an entire NBA team.

It’s aligned with the remaining personnel. Brandin Podziemski and Gui Santos embody it. There’s Will Richard barrelling into the post to contest shots or grab rebounds, or maybe it’s Moses Moody closing harder than a restaurant worker flipping the sign over at 10pm just as a car pulls into the parking lot.

It’s weird. It’s hard. And it’s one heck of a show.

Podz may well be the face of this new roster. Confident to the point of self-delusion, it’s an endearing lack of doubt that is at the heart of why this team works so well right now. In a team constructed from some of the most marginal roster spots, the Warriors have found something that money can’t buy: happiness.

Podziemski hauled in a career-high 15 rebounds and came an assist shy of his first career triple-double. He missed nine of his first 10 shots before converting all six of his attempts in a magical fourth quarter.

Served with a side of delusion or not, this team is coming for throats every single night. They may not have the sharpest claws or longest fangs, but this beast is a different order of magnitude when it comes to hunger. Absolutely nothing to lose, and no one to save them.

I’m here for it.

Now the question will be where this all goes from here.

The absence of Draymond Green in that last game may have signaled the opening of a regime change. Sure, the shots were falling, but that was made possible by a free flowing approach that has begun to feel further and further away from Green’s comfort zone. There’s no one standing at the top of the key angrily waving players into predictable motions, nor were the possessions stalled by stagnant chases of a perfect shot.

When Green first took the starting center spot over incumbent, David Lee, it was because it got too hard to ignore how much better everything looked with Green on the court. Now, all these years later, the cycle may be coming back around.

Already strongly pairing Green’s minutes with Curry in order to maximize the wily glue value of the volatile but versatile forward, it’s drawing attention to how Green isn’t a great option if not paired with Curry. Kerr spoke on this recently:

“I think it’s already looked a little different,” Kerr said. “His minutes are down some. The one thing we do know as a staff is when Steph is healthy, we’re going to play pretty much all of Draymond’s minutes with Steph just to make sure we are getting the most out of him offensively. But when Steph’s not out there, as you’ve seen several games over the last couple of weeks, we may not close with Draymond. We might close with Al, Kristaps, maybe both of them. And Draymond has accepted that.

“He and I have talked about this, and he’s handled it unbelievably well. He’s told me, he said, ‘I get it. If you don’t close with me, I’ll be alright. That’s where our team is. That’s where I am. I’m going to stay ready.’ And that’s exactly what he’s done.”

I’ve spent the entire piece circling a feeling - not a playoff push, not a dynasty echo, not even a transition plan - but a strange, electric kind of survival. And maybe that’s what makes this all so compelling. The injuries, the salary imbalance, the flu, the fading era, the scrappy role players, the unexpected joy… it all points to a team that should feel like an ending, yet somehow doesn’t.

What’s happening right now isn’t sustainable basketball. It isn’t efficient roster construction. It isn’t even particularly logical.

But it is unmistakably alive.

The Warriors are operating without their stars, without their financial flexibility, and increasingly, without the structural identity that defined their dynasty years. In its place is something looser, louder, and far more desperate - a team powered less by system and more by nerve. We are guessing. Loudly guessing all down the list, from the front office, to the coach, to that one dude making a minimum salary that’s suddenly looked to as one of their best options. Each and every one of them is looking right back into the camera and giving a big smiling nod. We may not win this, but damn straight it’s going to be one hell of an attempt.

And that nerve is contagious.

It shows up in loose balls chased like they matter more than dignity. It shows up in Podz tossing up floaters like a man trying to prove that gravity is negotiable. It shows up in Santos, Moody, and every end-of-rotation body playing like minutes are oxygen. There’s nothing left to protect.

This isn’t the beautiful game. It’s the desperate one.

Prediction

The Warriors are hot. That injury list is a huge concern, but even so, this is a winnable game. Golden State by 7.

1. I looked so you don’t have to. The Pelicans are bottom five in both attempts and shooting percentage (26th in three-point shot attempt rate, 25th in 3pt%)