Injured Stars Proving No Issue for Juggernaut Golden State Warriors
The announcement came Tuesday evening: Stephen Curry would not return from a sprained right ankle in time to join the Golden State Warriors for their Christmas Day NBA Finals rematch with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Losing a top-five player for any amount of time stings—well, rather, it should sting. The Warriors are uniquely built to endure absences that cripple pretty much every other team. So when Curry, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson or anyone else misses time, however much, they needn't submit to knee-jerk urgency or concern.
Sure, with regard to Curry specifically, the impulse to worry or indulge unrestrained panic is omnipresent. He remains the Warriors' most valuable player, a two-time MVP who shapes their identity by merely being on the floor. And the memory of his ankle issues from years past has not melted into distant myth.
At the same time, despite previous setbacks that include surgery on this exact ankle, Curry has missed more than 10 games in a single season only once. And he totaled just 16 combined absences through each of the previous five seasons. The days of assuming the worst are gone.
Golden State is instead free to focus solely on the immediate task, treading water without him, while paying little credence to big-picture pitfalls—nightmare scenarios it's constructed to withstand anyway.
Next Star(s) Up
Figuring out how to overcome the injury of an All-Star falls under the "Dom Perignon Problems" umbrella when the Warriors have three others in their employ—not to mention a Finals MVP, in Andre Iguodala, coming off the bench.
In the 455 minutes they played without Curry before his injury, they outscored opponents by 6.1 points per 100 possessions, a net rating that would still rank among the league's four best. But while they're good-to-great without him, they're indomitable with him. Their differential per 100 possessions spikes by 10.5 points when he plays—the second-largest jump on the team:
Surviving sans Steph is different than soldiering on without Durant. Going 15-4 with a league-best defense last season during his 19-game recovery from a sprained MCL felt natural. They were used to playing without him, and it showed.
Curry went bonkers over 18 solo appearances, increasing his shot attempts, ball-handling responsibilities and freelance duties. Flipping the script would be different, if not more difficult, as ESPN.com's Zach Lowe unpacked at the outset of this experiment:
"Here's the weird truth: even in this halcyon era, the Warriors never quite figured out offense with Curry on the bench. They've scored at around a league-average rate, or worse, with Curry resting in each of the past four seasons, per NBA.com. They have never really locked on a non-Curry identity. They move around without purpose, in cluttered space. Green shoots and distributes more and can get a little wild. Thompson shoots more and a little less accurately."
Diluting Golden State's Curry-less exercise down to "Well, Durant is a top-five player, so they'll be fine" felt wrong, if only out of fear for diminishing the point guard's importance. But, in hindsight, that was the correct approach.
Durant is averaging 32.2 points, 10.0 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 2.8 blocks while slashing 47.9/38.3/92.5 over the past six games (all wins)—numbers that smoke his per-minute production without Curry before now. The Warriors' offensive rating has dropped, going from 114.6 to 108.5, but their output mostly normalizes whenever Durant is on the floor (110.6).
And this, mind you, comes amid other absences and relative inconsistency.
A right shoulder injury has limited Green to one game since Curry exited the rotation. Ditto for net-rating superhero Zaza Pachulia, who has fewer than five minutes to his name during this time as he works through left shoulder soreness.
Head coach Steve Kerr has burned through five different starting lineups in six games. Just one five-man combination has eclipsed 20 minutes of action, and only two have seen spin in more than two of Golden State's past five outings.
Star power cushions the blow associated with instability. Curry, Durant and Green give the Warriors three players who can anchor units independent of another. Look at how they all fare when going at it alone, per NBA Math:
Small samples are the enemy of sweeping conclusions, but they're easier to buy when trafficking in All-NBA talent. Even Thompson qualifies as a safety net. He doesn't get the opportunity to run his own show and basically hasn't dribbled since 2015, but he's a member of some bench-heavy units that comfortably outstrip opponents.
Stars Behind the Stars
Fluidity by force doesn't look so hot if the Warriors lack the stabilizing forces behind their marquee names. Their backups, as well as their backups to the backups, deserve credit for creating separation from other second units while shifting roles on a whim.
Kerr can be a creature of habit with his rotations when Golden State is at full strength, but he also manages to find daylight for every active player in some capacity. Garbage time, spot starts, extra minutes here and there off the pine and, yes, injuries help keep the roster fresh and engaged.
Fourteen of the Warriors' 15 players have seen action in at least 23 games. And no bench posts a better point differential per 100 possessions. These two things do not seem mutually exclusive.
Every one of Golden State's non-stars acts as an expert gap-filler. Omri Casspi subsists on cuts more than three-pointers. Jordan Bell flings passes on the move. David West is a screen-setting and spot-up failsafe. Andre Iguodala's counting stats are the most misleading totals in basketball.
"None of Andre Iguodala, Omri Casspi, David West or Shaun Livingston is a volume scorer, but each is so adaptable as to stumble into 15 points on a given night by playing in the flow of the game," SI.com's Rob Mahoney wrote. "Durant will do the heavy lifting. Thompson produces reliably, and the team defense—even without Green—has been stout. All that's left is for the role players to find whatever organic means to contribute a particular game allows."
Iguodala serves as the crowning example of Golden State's interchangeability, shape-shifting his role on command. He's shooting under 40 percent since Curry went down and hitting fewer than 26 percent of his threes, but the Warriors are plus-15.7 points per 100 possessions with him on the court—third-best mark on the team.
Give him enough shooters and cutters, and the offense will sing with him as its hub. Golden State plays like a 59-win team in the 72 minutes he's spent without Curry, Durant and Green, according to NBA Math. And he works among the stars, because he'll set screens and stage dives of his own.
His spot-up shooting is on the fritz, but he spaces the floor by firing off threes anyway and derailing closeouts with pump-and-dumps. He still tackles some of the toughest defensive assignments, albeit with more reservations than he'll show in late April through mid-June.
An Identity for Every Situation
Playing without Curry—and Green—does alter the Warriors' cosmetic approach to the game. They don't play as fast or get out in transition as much, instead emphasizing half-court sets married to Durant's decision-making. They aren't tossing as many passes or matching their typical assist rate (70.1 to 67.6) for the same reason.
Running out the most switchable lineups becomes more important when they're not leveraging Curry's parking-lot range. Their three-point-attempt rate has plummeted (from ninth to 25th). They make it a priority to prevent opponent transition opportunities, knowing they don't necessarily have the firepower to offset gimme buckets.
Things change. They have to. But the Warriors, as a collective, still work. Losing one superstar doesn't faze them. Losing a second doesn't, either. They faced the Memphis Grizzlies without Curry, Green, Iguodala, Livingston and Pachulia on Wednesday night...and still won by double digits.
Short of Curry, Durant and Green being hurt all at the same time, they have no meaningful vulnerability. And even then, the implication would be that Iguodala and Thompson can float a competitive outfit for some period of time.
Those who stress over Curry's absence specifically do so not out of genuine angst, but for intrigue's sake. His scratch from the Christmas Day festivities isn't a signal for doom, just a watchability wart. "Bah humbug!" not "Oh, wow, Golden State is screwed."
"The chemistry on this team keeps going when guys go down," Patrick McCaw said, per the Bay Area News Group's Mark Medina. "Guys tend to pick it up. That's the biggest thing of our team, the chemistry."
Well this, and the fact that the Warriors are comfortable in many different forms—talented enough at the top and deep enough throughout to remain the NBA's best even when they're not at their own.
Unless otherwise cited, all stats are courtesy of NBA.com or Basketball Reference and current leading into games on Dec. 21.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale) and listen to his Hardwood Knocks podcast co-hosted by B/R's Andrew Bailey.
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