Hard times for Golden State?
By Guillaume Mahot
The new NBA season has barely started and, unfortunately for the Warriors, playoffs already seem to be complicated to reach in the jungle of the West Conference. Defeated 110-127 last night against San Antonio in their new home venue of Chase Center, Golden State, NBA champion in 2015, 2017 and 2018, has now lost four games out of the five they played so far.
This summertime was paving the way for a difficult beginning of 2019/2020 exercise, with Kevin Durant leaving for Brooklyn, American Nigerian Andre Iguodala traded to Memphis, Shaun Livingston retiring, and Klay Thompson injured on one of his knees for the whole season. This week made it even worse with point guard Stephen Curry injured on the hand for about three months!
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A few weeks ago, the Warriors had a starting lineup composed of DeMarcus Cousins, Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Kevin Durant. Andre Iguodala sitting on the bench. Today, nobody remains since Green got injured last night on his left index finger. All you have is a supposedly top player (D’Angelo Russell) who is taking a lukewarm departure with his new franchise.
The bench looks weak too. Everyone can remember how sad Steve Kerr was when he learnt that Iguodala would leave, not only because of his experience but also for the backup he was bringing to the staff, surrounding youngsters and new players and playing this part perfectly. Unwilling to play with the Grizzlies, the former MVP of the Finals (2015) wishes to go to the Clippers or the Lakers shortly.
This being said, without Curry, about to miss fifty games, without Green and without Thompson, the race towards playoffs will quickly become too tough if substitutes do not rise their level, which can be questioned since Burks, Cauley-Stein or Chriss are not famous for being All-Stars. You cannot replace All-Stars by not-All-Stars elements and hope to get the same output. So, Warriors and Knicks, same struggle?
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