The Golden State Warriors were riding high with eight-game winning streak, a breakout rookie in Yaxel Lendeborg and Stephen Curry in MVP form heading into Wednesday's game vs. the Rockets. Then the record cut out at their party when Curry suffered an oblique tear that will cost him at least two weeks and maybe more.
If it is really just a two-week absence, he'll only miss six games and the Warriors will have dodged a bullet. But even that long without Curry is going to be an uphill battle for a team that, its hot start notwithstanding, already has little margin for error.
In general, there are obvious things that need to happen whenever a team loses the superstar that can cover for their mistakes: Limit turnovers (always a problem for the Warriors) and control the glass (Golden State is a relatively good rebounding team and should be able to be even better with some bigger non-Curry lineups; offensive boards go a long way for a team that is now likely to struggle to score for stretches). Winning the possession game will be vital.
You just have to be sharper in general without the ultimate bailout player on the floor. But more specifically, here are three things that probably need to happen for the Warriors to stay afloat without Curry.
1. Yaxel Lendeborg has to play like an All-Star
After the Houston loss, Draymond Green had this to say about Lendeborg's 25-point, 10-rebound showing that helped fuel a post-Steph-injury surge and kept the Warriors in the game most of the way.
"The thing he's gonna have to learn to understand is, alright, Steph wasn't out there. [Durant] was off the court [for the Rockets]. You look around, you're probably the best player on the floor. Regardless of team. I think there was a point where he realized like, 'Oh, ding ding ding.' And he started attacking, and the game flipped for us.
"I think that's something he's going to have to realize really fast, is like, there will be often times where he could possibly be the best player on the floor regardless of the team. And we need him to show that, and he doesn't have a problem doing it."
This will never be truer than over these next couple of weeks. Lendeborg, a 24-year-old rookie, is now the Warriors' best player, and they need him to play like it. They need aggression. They need the production, from his iso scoring to creation for others to fueling and finishing as many transition attacks as possible.
He's capable of carrying a team. We saw it against the Clippers, when he went for 37 points and six assists with six 3-pointers and just one turnover as the go-to guy with Curry out.
But that was against one of the worst teams in the league (he gets Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs on Friday), and it was a one-night thing when maybe everyone wasn't quite aware of how good he really is. The secret is out now, and Lendeborg's name is going to be the one circled on every opponent's whiteboard moving forward. He'll get the overarching defensive focus. He'll get the double teams. And he'll have the burden of producing big numbers through all that.
There's no question that Lendeborg has looked incredible to start the year. He has the game and confidence to be a No. 1 option even just three weeks into his professional career. He's the Rookie of the Year favorite for a reason, and there has been justified talk about his being a real All-Star candidate. It's too early to be making statements like that, but for as long as Curry is out, Yaxel indeed needs to perform at that kind of level for an offense that doesn't really have anyone else capable of creating consistent advantages.
2. Stay hot from deep
So far, the Warriors are making 16.5 3-pointers per game at a 39.7% clip. Both of those marks lead the league. A lot of this is Curry, who is making 4.3 triples per game at a truly absurd 45.7% rate given his shot difficulty, but it's not all him.
Give Brandin Podziemski the courtesy of rounding up three-tenths of a percent, and the Warriors have three guys currently making at least two 3s per game with at least a 40% conversion rate.
These are going to be the main gunners, but Golden State has other capable shooters. Georges Niang and Al Horford. LJ Cryer is about to see more time, and he's a 41.7% shooter. Will Richard is at 45.8%. These are all low-volume shooters who now have the green light.
This is how the Warriors stayed competitive against the Rockets, by jacking up 51 3s. They only made 17 of them, but that was still four more than the Rockets. That's a 12-point surplus, and the Warriors can still make plenty of mathematical hay with Curry out.
It won't be easy. His gravity creates a lot of these open looks guys enjoy, and that's where Lendeborg's ability to draw multiple defenders is going to be essential, but if everyone can combine to make just a few more 3s than normal, it can go a long way toward at least partially replacing Curry's 4.3 3s per game in the aggregate.
3. Tighten the defensive screws
The Warriors are a top-10 defense (No. 9 if you remove garbage time, per Cleaning the Glass), and though they are giving up almost seven more points per 100 possessions with Curry off the floor, there's some deception in that stat.
Curry is a solid team defender and still better individually than a lot of people think, which is to say he's not going to be the reason your defense is bad. But he's also not the reason this Warriors defense is -- or at least has been -- good, and theoretically they should be just fine without him on that side of the ball. There's even a chance they get better.
De'Anthony Melton will likely start in his place. The Warriors, as mentioned, can play bigger. Curry's juice is infectious and that factors into defensive energy, and the upcoming schedule is a test (San Antonio, Boston and Memphis all register as top-eight offenses), but Green and company know the onus is on the defense to keep Golden State from taking on water without its captain. Are the Warriors up to the challenge?
