Preview: Schedule pressure eases, but Warriors need to figure a few things out
Kuminga still out, Horford out for a week, Green Questionable (foot)
The Golden State Warriors are finally back at home, but the team is still looking for answers. Still no expected return data for Jonathan Kuminga, but it also looks like Golden State has a couple of other new injuries to contend with. Draymond Green is listed as Questionable (foot), and Al Horford is out. Horford was pulled from the Warriors’ last game in the 3rd quarter and didn’t return - an injury that the team is now calling lower back pain, which will keep the Warriors’ big out of the lineup for at least a week.
Green’s injury is less certain. He got stepped on in the Blazers game, so while this injury doesn’t appear to be a significant one, any additional injury-related roster impacts right now are far from ideal.
GAME DETAILS
WHO: Golden State Warriors (9-9) vs. Utah Jazz (5-10)
WHEN: Monday, November 24th, 2025; 7pm PST
WATCH: NBCSBA
Is Chuck finally right? Are the Warriors too small?
No. Probably not, but it is something they need to more actively plan around.
The Warriors arrived back home from their six-game, nine-day road trip around 4 a.m. on Thursday, and soon thereafter lost their first home game of the season. The Portland Trail Blazers aren’t one of the league’s elite teams, but the dominated Golden State on the glass, nullifying a big night from Stephen Curry. Curry still has it. That was his 6th game of 30 or more points scored this season; but the Warriors are just 3-3 over those six games.
The Blazers had 20 more rebounds than Golden State in the last game, including 15 offensive boards in the third quarter alone (they ended up with 21 overall; feeding into 28 second-chance points for Portland). Curry went nuts, but it just wasn’t enough to overcome all of the above.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum, the Warriors just finished an absolutely savage run of basketball that saw them play 11 games in an 18-day stretch, covering more than nine thousand miles. But regardless of the background factors, there were some lessons learned during the roadtrip.
Now that Golden State is back home, they’ll reportedly carve out some time for team practices. At first, it was framed as a time to work on incorporating Kuminga back into the mix, but it’s become clear that the Warriors are going to need to stabilize everything else as well. Especially if Kuminga’s absence is going to stretch out as long as appearances indicate.
“He’s got to tell you where he is,” Kerr told reporters when asked about Kuminga’s activity on Sunday [h/t ClutchPoints’ Kenzo Fukuda. “He didn’t do anything. We didn’t do scrimmages, but we did live drill work, and he barely did any of that. So, [he’s] not moving well, so training staff [is] working with him. I have no idea what he’s doing.”
That could be a microcosm of the Warriors’ broader problems as well though. No one knows what’s going on, but the players aren’t moving well, etc. It comes back to the reality of where this team is in their lifecycle. The old vets don’t move so well anymore, and the young players that have been asked to slot in around the edges are frequently lower cost developing players that just don’t have the same inherent basketball acumen.
The core identity of this team is that players are flying around everywhere. Moving off the ball and setting screens on offense, freely rotating and covering for each other defensively. Now though, the defensive rotations aren’t as crisp - or maybe it’s just that the rest of the league is faster now, relatively speaking. One way or the other though, the Warriors no longer have as much margin for error as they used to.
Turnovers are one of the main areas - as has been the case for many years. Historically, this was seen as the cost of doing business for a team offense that highly prioritizes ball movement. This is something the team has broadcast as a focus during the practices and upcoming home games this week.
Turnovers have always been detrimental, but the Warriors old dominance afforded a fair bit of wiggle room for the teams that is no longer there.
Which brings us to the other issue the Warriors are going to have to figure out. If they are going to be playing small (no Horford or Kuminga, maybe no Green) then the Warriors asymetric warfare approach will have to strategically win some of these other fights. How will Golden State approach these two, seemingly contradictory issues, at the same time? They’ll figure it out. Hopefully.
Because according to basketball reference, the Warriors have a bottom-ten offense. Take a look at the team’s rate statistics here (with league rank shown in parenthisis).
Off Rtg: 113.6 (23rd of 30)
Def Rtg: 113.7 (12th of 30)
Net Rtg: -0.1 (17th of 30)
In order to stay relevant, the Warriors need to fix their turnovers, while also somehow powering up their anemic offense. I’m not sure what exactly that looks like - especially given the short-handed frontcourt - but we have all seen bigger miracles come out of this franchise. Why not one or two more?
Prediction
Warriors look serious, play serious, but have fun on their way to a win.