Some pains can’t be hidden. Like an old man with a weird hitch in his walk that is clearly a bad knee, the Golden State Warriors have limped into their season with a 0-3 start. Big man depth is the main issue, but the workload management surrounding Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Al Horford is compounding the problem. Unavoidable and unfortunate!
This is a marathon season, but the Warriors can’t continue to allow these losses to pile up. Without a few of their key players, this portion of the year is especially brutal, and the Denver Nuggets aren’t going to make this any easier. Though Golden State will get Curry and Green back, they will still have to face a team that features the most dominant big man of the modern era.
On the injury front, Gui Santos is questionable, Charles Bassey seems to be back and is listed as Probable.
GAME DETAILS
WHO: Golden State Warriors (0-3) at Denver Nuggets (1-1)
WHEN: Monday, October 25th, 2026; 7pm PST
WATCH: Peacock, YouTubeTV
Bright spots and hand grenades
Look, Dub Nation, I’m not going to sugar coat it: the Warriors have not looked good so far. Forget greatness, this team has barely registered a shred of relevance throughout the first three games.
Per Basketball Reference, the Warriors are near dead last in defense and offense. I won’t list them all out here, but suffice it to say that teams are shooting very well against the Warriors, and the Warriors offense isn’t making up for it on the other end due in large part to their bad shooting
By and large, what the Warriors are trying to do isn’t working. This isn’t Plan A, but we aren’t quite all the way down to Plan Z either. Sure, the first few games have been a haunting parade of blown defensive assignments, players who are too slow or make bad decisions, and strobe light flashes of superior players having their way with the Warriors’ backup plans.
However, it’s important to keep the longer marathon in sight. The Warriors know that this is at best a holding pattern. Given the unexpected1 absence of Kristaps Porzingis, the holding pattern itself is a whole lot less viable than initially envisioned. Instead, the Warriors have been getting knocked around by other teams that are running significantly closer to their Plan A.
And yet, there is a glimmer of hope here. The Warriors biggest current play for new talent appears to be legitimate. After a strong (to very strong) preseason, Yaxel Lendeborg is emerging as one of the team leaders this season. How fast that emergence can happen is one of the most intriguing questions this season.
Golden State has had plenty of interesting rookies recently. James Wiseman had flashes, as did Jonathan Kuminga - and of course, Moses Moody stands out as the most viable recent prospect. But what compounds the mystery of Lendeborg is exactly this dual convergence of opportunity and expectations. There was a bit more wiggle room in the past. Now, Curry remains the lone star, as the rest of the constellations around him have faded. The second timeline didn’t need to save the franchise, but the third might. What comes next here matters a whole lot more as what came before fades out like the end of a song. There’s still some harmonious echoes, but it’s clear that the volume is diminished for Curry, and certainly for Green.
How different would the narrative be if the Warriors had won that second game against the Memphis Grizzlies? How damaging can 13 minutes of Georges Niang really be?
These are the sorts of what-ifs that will continue to rumble in the foreground of this season while the background noise is really what’s setting the tone. Niang shouldn’t be playing closing minutes. Once the Warriors can get into that reality, then the rules are different and hopefully the results are different. But until the rest of the rotation establishes enough breathing room, Golden State is…
A moment, Dub Nation, if you will?
I believe I’ve just found a great disturbance in the fabric. Is Popcorn Machine done?
Oof. A moment please for those of us that are faceless, working to keep the bots at bay. Popcorn Machine has been my go-to for seeing the lineup scoring for a decade now. Hope it’s just a quirk. But I’d like to take an intentional pause here to appreciate all of our paid subscribers. Thank you!
Anyways, the darkness.
It’s there.
There were a couple of nasty, career-altering injuries in the league last night. So it’s not just the Warriors that are way down into their contingency planning. Time relentlessly marches on, and professional sports demands the next era present itself and occupy the space.
Yaxel is doing exactly that
The rookie leads the team in minutes played (103 for Yaxel) - Melton and Santos in 2nd place with 68, Curry is 7th on the team with 51 minutes played. But the thing about Yaxel Lendeborg is that he’s not just putting up numbers. He’s doing a little bit of everything - and doing it at a rate that’s hard to ignore.
Through three games, he’s got 56 points, 25 rebounds, and 13 assists. The Warriors are 0-3, the roster is held together with duct tape, and Yax is already looking like someone who belongs. Against Phoenix, he put up 26 points, nine rebounds, and five assists, knocking down six threes along the way. That’s not just a rookie getting some extra run. The variety is the interesting part. Lendeborg isn’t just finding a way to score; he’s affecting the game in enough different ways that it’s getting harder to write him off as a guy simply cashing in on extra minutes. The Warriors have plenty of problems to solve. Finding out what they have in Yaxel might be one of the more enjoyable ones.
Is Yaxel enough?
No. Not on his own, but he’s nice. Hopefully that’s enough. His production matters because of its breadth, not just the volume. Points, rebounds, assists, and three-point shooting give you evidence that he might be able to help in more than one role. The argument isn't that three games prove he's a foundational piece; it's that he may be showing the versatility this particular roster needs.
Three games don't make Yaxel Lendeborg the future of the Warriors. But they do give us a reason to keep watching
The Warriors have some help now, with more on the way. As the roster gets healthier and the team figures out how to move forward without Porzingis, the players currently on the margins have a chance to become something more than emergency options.
These are wild swings. Bassey on Jokic? It might be our best answer, but it’s hardly a good answer. But this is a team that cut their teeth on defying the odds. Undersized and supposedly underskilled, the Warriors have re-shaped the league in a truly historic way. That kind of history doesn't guarantee the next group anything (as recent 2nd timeline history has shown), but it does make you wonder when the next unlikely cast of characters might start making trouble.
So will Yaxel, Podz, and Bassey prove to be an overwhelming force against the Denver Nuggets? The odds say no, but my heart says maybe. Those guys are getting older too. The NBA is always churning, and who’s to say the the Warriors next generation isn’t coming for the throats of the league?
0-3? This team was never playing for first or second place in anything other than a fantasy. This may not be super pretty, but it is the contingency plan. And who knows, maybe what’s developing here can blossom into something special over the next few months. In the interim, Golden State will be mostly focused on staying poised - and praying for whatever miracles the universe has left to give.
Prediction
Curry goes nuts, Yax’s ascension continues, Warriors with a razor margin that comes down to the wire.
Whether or not the Warriors should have expected this issue or not is an entirely separate question.