Getty Steve Kerr and Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors.
It’s been a rough season for the Golden State Warriors. After winning the NBA Championship last year, they currently sit at 15-18, have lost seven of their last nine games, are dealing with an injury to Stephen Curry, and find themselves in 11th place in the Western Conference.
They’ve lost two games in a row to the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets, both by a margin of 30 or more points. After their loss to the Nets, in which they gave up 91 points in the first half, head coach Steve Kerr said that the team has hit “rock bottom.”
“Our spirit is fine,” Kerr said. “Our energy is good. The guys are committed. We’re just right now at that point that pretty much everybody goes during in an 82-game season, most teams anyway, [where] you hit rock bottom with injuries, schedule, fatigued, whatever it is. You take it on the chin. The whole key is how you respond to that. I have no doubt our guys will respond, but we’ve got to clean up the execution. Turnovers are a killer.”
Golden State played six road games in a row and lost five of them, earning their only victory over the Toronto Raptors. With Curry on the sidelines, they’ve had to band together in an attempt to pick up the slack, but it hasn’t resulted in many wins quite yet.
Curry was putting up MVP-level numbers before a shoulder injury took him out. The superstar point guard has appeared in 26 of the team’s 33 games while playing 34.4 minutes per contest. He’s averaged 30.0 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 6.8 assists per game on 50.0% shooting from the floor and 43.4% shooting from behind the three-point arc.
Stephen Curry Delivers Unfortunate Injury Update
Over the years, the star point guard has been the fulcrum of Golden State’s offense, and that was no different before his injury this season. Guys like Jordan Poole and Klay Thompson will have to pick up the pace while Curry is injured.
Unfortunately for the Warriors, Curry recently revealed that he’s “nowhere near” picking up a basketball yet.
“This is an interesting one just because I haven’t had an injury like this to the shoulder. So it’s kind of a wait-and-see approach,” Curry said “I’m still in the early healing process, so I’m nowhere near, even like, picking up a basketball yet… It’ll be a few weeks. I think into the New Year, and I’ll start to key in on a timeline from there.”
Draymond Green Praises Jordan Poole
Poole has been looked at as the successor to Curry ever since his breakout season last year. And with the star guard sitting on the bench, he’ll be looked at to step up. After Golden State’s win over Toronto, Draymond Green praised Poole’s play and called on him to fill the void in Curry’s absence.
“He was incredible on both sides of the ball,” Green said. “And when you connect the game like that, things will go your way. We all know what a special talent he is. He’s been going through some growing pains. To see him come out tonight and have the game that he had – especially with Steph being down and us needing to get a win – was really huge. His effort on the defensive end carried over to the offensive end.”
