SAN FRANCISCO — The 21-21 Golden State Warriors are 10-10 on the road and 11-11 at home. The latest chapter in this stumble toward mediocrity was one of the more predictable ones. Without several rotation players against a fully stocked Boston Celtics team, the Warriors were blown out by 40 points, 125-85, Monday afternoon in Chase Center.
This was the first of what will be several missed games for Draymond Green, who limped off three minutes into Saturday night’s win over the Wizards and has been ruled out for at least a week with a strained left calf. That means they’ll be without Green and Jonathan Kuminga against the Kings, Bulls and Lakers this week.
Brandin Podziemski and Kyle Anderson could return in the near future. But Kuminga will remain out significantly longer and there is no guarantee that Green will be seen during the upcoming six-game homestand, which closes with the Jazz, Thunder, Suns and Magic. That means the Warriors will be without their two best frontcourt players in a stretch Steph Curry called “make or break” for the direction of their season.
“We’ve been in situations where we’ve had to chase down the stretch after the All-Star break,” Curry said. “I think two years of that, it takes a lot out of you. So you have to find a way to stay in the race and the standings. Nobody’s counting game-by-game type thing, but this six to eight game stretch can kind of define where we are going forward the rest of the season.”
The middle portion of the Western Conference standings is a forgiving place. The struggling Suns were blown out by the Cavaliers on Monday, leaving them tied with the Warriors at 21-21. The Timberwolves have fallen back to 22-21 and the Warriors already own the tiebreaker over them.
The Kings are 22-20 and about to embark on a difficult six-game road trip. The Lakers, at 22-18, have a negative net rating after a 2-4 stretch. The Mavericks have gone 3-9 in their last 12 and are without Luka Dončić indefinitely. They lost to Charlotte on Monday to fall to 23-20.
So everything between the sixth and 11th seeds in the conference feels similar and the top side of that pod is obtainable to everyone. But that’s also what heightens a few of these head-to-head matchups with the Warriors in the coming days, against the Kings, Lakers and Suns, especially considering what lies on the other end of it.
The next time the Warriors go out on an extended road trip is Feb. 5. The trade deadline is Feb. 6, a checkpoint that’ll signal whether the front office pushes chips in the middle to help this current team or opts to either stand pat or trade away a piece to duck the luxury tax.
The loss to the Celtics on Monday afternoon didn’t alter the equation. This was their toughest opponent and likeliest defeat. But the way it went down was another alarming example of the current state of the offense. They scored 85 points (39 in the first half ) and have continued to produce at a bottom-10 level for nearly two months. Curry believes the extended droughts have bled into ineffectiveness on the other end.
“A big part of our season has been when we can’t score, we lose spirit, we lose life, we lose competitiveness,” Curry said.
This was part of a blunt press conference from Curry, in which he noted Boston’s “swagger and confidence” as the “exact opposite” of his team’s current vibe.
Steph Curry: “A big part of our season has been when we can’t score, we lose spirit, we lose life, we lose competitiveness.” pic.twitter.com/FAAhSqbAnk
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) January 21, 2025
(Photo of Green earlier this month: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
