February 15, 2025
The Warriors get the win, but not without pain against the Wizards

The Warriors get the win, but not without pain against the Wizards

Warriors get win, but not without pain against Wizards originally aired on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – Add four more exceedingly frightening sights to this excruciating Warriors season.

The first incident occurred three minutes after tipoff Saturday night, when Draymond Green’s increasingly visible limp became unbearable for him and he walked to the locker room with calf strains, ending his evening.

The second sight came in the third quarter when Stephen Curry’s right thumb, which had been tender for three weeks, suffered a bump that caused him to shake off the pain. He stayed in the game, but any problem with Curry’s shooting hand is too concerning to dismiss.

The third came in the final minutes when Curry landed hard after colliding under the basket, hobbling his left ankle and immediately leaving the game.

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The fourth and least significant midseason point is that the Warriors needed a Herculean effort from Andrew Wiggins to pull off a 122-114 victory over the Washington Wizards – the worst team in the NBA – that gave them only tepid relief from a sellout Audience (18,064) at Chase Center.

“Draymond is having an MRI tomorrow and Steph just told me he doesn’t think it’s serious,” coach Steve Kerr said. “But both will be part of everyday life for the time being.”

Depending on the test results, this game is, at first glance, the definition of a Pyrrhic victory. Even if the medical news is positive, any optimism will be tempered. Curry was pretty good at self-diagnosing ankle problems, but Green was limping so badly that it was obviously painful and appeared to be serious.

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That’s because the Warriors’ fate largely depends on the effectiveness and availability of Curry and Green, the team’s decorated veterans and co-leaders. This was the first game in a series where eight of nine games will be played at Chase. The schedule for the next two-plus weeks presents an opportunity to move up the Western Conference standings.

Yet here are the Warriors, with their offensive engine nursing ankle and thumb soreness and their defensive ace returning after a three-game absence, not making it past the first timeout and almost certainly at least a few more will miss games.

When Green left the pitch, he was replaced by Gui Santos, who played just eight minutes without scoring. Moses Moody was an admirable power forward, scoring 13 points and a plus-12 in 29 minutes – enough to warrant more playing time.

“When he’s at No. 4, generally there are other shooters around him,” Kerr said of Moody, now in his fourth season. “There’s room for him. He always does his best for us in that role when he’s basically on the perimeter, ready to shoot, using his strength and length and making frantic plays like he did tonight.

“If Draymond is out for a short period of time, that’s a good chance for Moses to get a lot of minutes in that fourth spot.”

On a night where so much went wrong, Wiggins did whatever was necessary to ensure a successful ending, scoring a team-high 31 points along with 11 rebounds, four assists and two blocks over 35 minutes.

“Andrew was great,” Kerr said. “He played at a really high level all season. The way things have been going over the last few weeks, we’ve really focused on his scoring. We try to get him on the field in all non-Steph minutes and give him a lot of attacking power.

“He does a lot of good things for us and scores in a variety of ways. And tonight he just played a complete game with the way he rebounded. He was fantastic.”

Wiggins and Curry each scored nine points in the fourth quarter as the Warriors held off the Wizards, who cut the deficit to five with 1:39 left before trailing off down the stretch.

The Warriors managed to avoid the pain of another loss to a struggling team, but it came at a cost. You can only hope that the value is not high enough to prevent any chance of momentum.

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