It’s a tall task, but a doable one.
The Golden State Warriors have a tall task ahead of them: winning a playoff series without their best player. On Tuesday, the Dubs shocked the Minnesota Timberwolves 99-88, to take a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference Semifinals. But it came at a cost: Steph Curry injured his hamstring early in the second quarter, and left the game. An MRI revealed that Curry suffered a Grade 1 hamstring strain, and will be re-evaluated on Wednesday. As a result, he’ll miss the next three games of the series, at minimum.
So, can the Warriors still win the series, even though they’ll be without their superstar for much of it?
Yes. Yes they can. But it won’t be easy at all. With Game 2 at 5:30 p.m. PT tonight, we’ll soon get our first glimpse of how the rest of the series might go. Here are seven ways that the Warriors can advance to the Western Conference Finals, even with a damaged chef.
All-in on defense
Even before Curry got injured on Tuesday, the Warriors were winning the game primarily because of their defense. Steve Kerr recently claimed that the Warriors had the best defense in the league following the arrival of Jimmy Butler III, and he’s not wrong: per Cleaning The Glass, Golden State’s garbage-time adjusted defensive rating of 109.9 from February 8 through the end of the regular season was the best in the league.
Curry’s absence hurts the Warriors, without a doubt. But it doesn’t hurt their defense. The players I expect to see the biggest increase in minutes with Curry out are Gary Payton II and Jonathan Kuminga. The former is their best perimeter defender; the latter is defensively disruptive and has played well against Minnesota.
The Warriors can’t bank on the Timberwolves shooting 17.2% on threes every night, but they can replicate their Game 1 defensive intensity and performance. And they’ll need to.
Make it dirty
Since the Warriors employ Draymond Green, I feel compelled to clarify what I mean by “dirty” before I go any further. I am not talking in the pejorative sense, with low blows and cheap shots and flagrants galore. I’m talking about what we saw from both teams in the grueling seven-game series against the Houston Rockets: a low-scoring, grind-it-out, make-it-ugly affair.
Let’s go back to that top-rated defense. Fascinatingly, during the Butler era of defensive eliteness, the Warriors have been right in the middle of the pack (14th in the league for each) in defensive effective field goal percentage and defensive rebounding rate. They’ve been slightly better than average (11th in the NBA) in defensive free throw rate.
Where they’ve excelled is at forcing turnovers, where their 17.8% mark led the league by miles (league average was 14.0% during that time).
This is where the Warriors can win. They can play physical, they can explode screens, they can swipe at every ball, and they can jump in front of drives. Make things difficult, and make things disruptive.
I defend Rudy Gobert more than the average Warriors-adjacent person, but even I’ll quickly admit that Minny’s center struggles when the game gets in the weeds. Julius Randle has a reputation for performing poorly during those types of games. Anthony Edwards won’t be put off by extra physicality or a slower game, but he can at least have his rhythm potentially checked.
So thanks, Houston. You provided the blueprint for how the Warriors can win.
Isolation scoring
Ball movement and off-ball movement has been the core tenet of Golden State’s offense during Kerr’s tenure. But while Kerr sometimes gets a little too stubborn with his offensive philosophies, he also gets unfairly maligned for refusing to break from them. Kerr has adjusted the offense to players like Butler, Kevin Durant, and even Kuminga. And he’s often adjusted the schemes when Curry is out.
He’ll do that for the next few games, and the Warriors need to be up to the task. That means Butler and Kuminga need to be willing to isolate and bully their way to the rim, because a slow, dirty, defense-centric game will demand that. It means Green and Buddy Hield need to be willing to attack the rim, instead of just shooting threes.
Movement will still be necessary, but more than at any point since Durant was on the team, players being able to go and get their own shot will be key. With that said…
Make some threes
In the modern NBA, nothing can flip a script like hot shooting. The Warrior played well in every phase of the game on Tuesday, yet it doesn’t take a math professor to point out that shooting 42.9% on threes while your opponent shoots 17.2% will impact the score, even if you’re not playing well.
Simply put, if the Warriors want to remain competitive, they need to get hot from beyond the arc. Hield, Green and even Payton and Butler have been doing so lately, and that needs to continue. Brandin Podziemski, Moses Moody, and Quinten Post have been struggling, and need to find their shot.
Good looks will be few and far between without Curry. The Warriors need to make the shots they get.
Embrace the underdog role
One of the most fascinating things to me in sports is when a low seed in the NCAA Tournament makes a run. Unless you watch someone melt down on a golf course, there’s nowhere in sports where you can see the psychological impact quite like watching a 15 or 16 seeded team come for a championship favorite.
The top seed might be expected to win by 50 points, but that creates expectations. And as soon as those expectations are put in jeopardy, panic can seep into a team’s performance.
Golden State has the chance to do that. They entered the series with the bulk of the pressure, tasked with trying to prove that their championship window is still open against an upstart team. Now the pressure has completely shifted. No one expects the Warriors to win. No one even expects them to be competitive. Any defeat would be inexcusable for Minnesota.
The Dubs can prey on that. If they jump out to an early lead in Game 2, the Wolves and their fans will get antsy. If they’re leading at halftime? Minnesota will be full on nervous.
Even if Golden State loses in Game 2, if they take a lead in Game 3 or 4, it will put so much pressure on their opponent. For the Warriors, a win is a win. For the Timberwolves, a win is the bare minimum. Hot starts, which will keep that pressure on, are key.
Someone step up
Countless times during the Warriors dynasty, an unexpected player has stepped up and shocked the basketball world with a game, series, or season-saving performance. Hell, the Warriors saw that just four days ago, when Hield had the best game of his career in Game 7 against the Rockets.
The Warriors need more of that, to supplement Hield, Butler, and Green. Kuminga is the obvious choice, but it could be Podziemski, Payton, Post, Moody, or hell, even Pat Spencer. It obviously doesn’t need to be the same player in each game, but it’s hard to see the Steph-less Warriors winning a game against Minnesota without someone having an eye-opening performance. Thankfully, the Dubs have plenty of players capable of it.
Just win one
The Warriors should get greedy wherever they can. They should, it goes without saying, try to win every game.
But what really matters is just winning one. Because, assuming Curry is able to return at some point, that’s all it takes to shift the momentum back in their direction.
Imagine the Warriors taking one of the home games, and Curry returning for Game 5. It would be a 2-2 series, and even though the Wolves would have home court advantage, they’d also have the knowledge that they were gifted nearly four games without Curry and couldn’t do better than a draw. It’s hard to see the Warriors losing the series in that scenario.
Even if Curry doesn’t return until Game 6, you have to like their chances of winning two straight if they were able to win a second game without him.
It’s kind of like their stretches at the end of the third and start of the fourth quarters, when Curry is on the bench: just hang around. Just keep it close enough that the stage is set for Curry to do his thing when he returns.