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That this season was going to be tough, the Warriors knew before finishing the previous one. The serious injury of Klay Thompson in the finals and the departure of Kevin Durant , who already sensed months before, split in half the core of the team that had dominated the NBA for the past five years. The beginning was already being disastrous, but everything is always susceptible to getting worse: in the last defeat against the Phoenix Suns, the third in four games, Stephen Curry suffered a broken left hand .
It was in the third quarter of a game that he already painted black. Curry collided with Aron Baynes upon entering the basket, destabilized in the air and landed badly on both hands. The 118 kilos of the Australian pivot fell on the left and the base fractured the second metacarpal. There are still no deadlines but the Warriors estimate that they could be between one and two months without the double MVP. Another stone in the backpack.
By then the Warriors were already falling by 29 points (84-55) against some Suns that, despite the improvement, do not seem candidates to get into the playoffs . And it was not the lowest point of the night, because in the first quarter they had conceded a partial 30-1 and Phoenix had come to win by 34. The third time in four games Golden State comes to see 30 points down .
The Warriors are, in part, victims of their own success. The contracts of Curry, Thompson and Draymond Green left them with no room for maneuver to replace Durant's march - not even to retain another pillar like Andre Iguodala. They tried to compensate him by agreeing to an exchange for D'Angelo Russell , more for talent than for lace in the team, which in his case could not be more different from the style of the Warriors. The movement condemned them to live with a hard salary limit: they would have to complete the workforce with remnants.
Thus they appeared on the first day of the season with the fifth youngest team in the NBA . Nine players under 23 and Klay Thompson injured for probably the entire season. Even then it was thought that they could reach a respectable level, but the first parties have cornered them in their place. Curry's injury buries the little hope they had standing.
That they were very few, seen the seen. Without Durant, Thompson, Iguodala or Shaun Livingston, the Warriors, who had dominated back the past five seasons, were being the worst defense in the league. And the rookies, young and retaliated with those who completed the squad do not yet give to put together an attack with which to compensate for such bleeding.
It is one of the few consolations left to them, young people like Eric Paschall or Jordan Poole will while not Curry, weight and minutes that would otherwise not have had. Well, that and that the hand that has fractured its star is the left, not the shot.
Minutes after losing the last finals, Adam Silver went to the Warriors locker room to congratulate them on the season and Steve Kerr joked asking him to let them take a sabbatical and "maybe travel to Italy, ride a bike and drink wine." The joke class with a real background, because if there was a team that needed a break was Golden State, the first to play five finals in a row (won three) from the Boston Celtics of the 60s. In total, 515 games in five seasons
Already before starting the course, he wondered if the Warriors should regulate the minutes of Green and Curry and let go. Give up the playoffs , have a high election in the next draft and take a good vacation in April to ease the mileage of these years. The option did not enter its winning gene and, at least as a mouthpiece, it still does not. But this Curry injury may have made the decision for them.
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