SAN FRANCISCO – On the second night of a back-to-back, the Warriors could be back at full strength.
Both Steph Curry and Draymond Green are expected to play against the Timberwolves on Friday at the Chase Center after each were inactive in Thursday night’s upset over the Rockets.
The Rockets victory was Curry’s fifth missed game of the season. He missed three with an ankle sprain in late October and two in the past week for bilateral knee pain, which has the potential to be a nagging injury the team will have to manage throughout the season.
Green, meanwhile, missed the past two games with left calf tightness; an MRI came back clean on it and Green said on his podcast that while the injury was scary, he’s glad the training staff caught it early.
Golden State is confident that the depth it has assembled makes it more capable of withstanding absences to its stars than in years past. The Warriors are 4-1 without Curry and 1-1 without Green. Last season, the Warriors went 3-5 in games Curry missed.
Andrew Wiggins is listed as questionable and will warm up before the Warriors determine his status. He has been dealing with a right ankle impingement and has been seen icing the inside of his foot after practices.
Wiggins and Jonathan Kuminga, who scored a career-high 33 points, keyed the Warriors’ win over Houston, which snapped a five-game losing streak.
The Warriors have now won 15 straight games against the Rockets, a span that stretches back to 2020 – before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s weird,” Kerr said. “I mean, we haven’t beaten Denver in eight tries. … Sometimes the NBA is funny like that. It doesn’t feel, to me, like we’ve dominated Houston. Or been dominated by Denver. Played tons of close games against both teams. I think it’s more random than anything. And a lot of those games came before Houston rebuilt, so they were in rebuilding mode and didn’t have a lot of talent. Now they’ve got talent.”
The Warriors have two matchups against Minnesota before a rematch with Houston — their third meeting of the season already — on Dec. 11 in the NBA Cup quarterfinal.
Notable
— Kerr declined to name a starting lineup ahead of the Timberwolves game, but given the team has Curry and Green back, it’ll be the coach’s first chance to make the type of rotation adjustments he telegraphed during Golden State’s skid. Lindy Waters III has been a recent DNP, and Kerr will likely further trim his rotation down from 12.
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— In his first 12 games of the season, Buddy Hield averaged 17.7 points while shooting 46.9% from deep off the bench. Since, he’s averaging 10 points per game on 36.1% shooting from 3.
“I think this is just part of the season,” Kerr said. “Especially for a shooter, you just go through stretches where you’re in rhythm, shooting with confidence, then it can leave you for a little bit. But the thing with guys like Buddy who have proven it over a long stretch, you just count on the fact that they know what they’re doing and they’re going to get their rhythm back. I know he will.”
