The Golden State Warriors couldn’t overcome a first-quarter injury to Stephen Curry, losing 115-108 to the Houston Rockets on Wednesday at Toyota Center.
Curry was ruled out after playing just six minutes. He finished with one three-pointer to extend his three-pointer streak to 102 games.
The Warriors fought back from a 17-point first-half deficit, at one point trailing 88-85 in the fourth quarter.
But the Rockets controlled the game from there.
Here are three takeaways from Wednesday’s game.
Silver Lining to Curry’s Injury Is Lendeborg Being Ready for More Responsibility
With Curry out, all eyes were on Yaxel Lendeborg to provide offense as a self-creator.
He passed the test.
Lendeborg finished with 25 points on 9-of-19 shooting. And though he had zero assists, he made the right pass consistently, which led to some open looks the Warriors missed.
Golden State’s offense will be worse if Curry misses any additional time. That’s obvious. But the Dubs will have a fighting chance if Lendeborg continues to play as well as he did Wednesday.
Cryer Fills in Nicely
LJ Cryer is about to get a lot of playing time. On Wednesday, he looked worthy of the minutes increase.
His stats were decent, as he had 13 points on 4-of-9 shooting, one assist and was a plus-18.
Perhaps most importantly, he had zero turnovers in 18 minutes.
Cryer’s ability to shoot could make him a viable NBA rotation player. But my big question for his career is if he has the innate qualities and ball-handling ability to excel at traditional point guard skills.
He can have some issues protecting the ball when facing major ball pressure.
We’ll see if he can continue to suppress turnovers on the rest of this five-game road trip.
Warriors Are Running Out of Healthy Bodies
Entering this week, the Warriors knew they would be without Jimmy Butler (knee), Moses Moody (knee) and Kristaps Porzingis (health issue) indefinitely. Then Brandon Williams suffered a hamstring injury that will keep him out a week.
Will Richard is playing through a UCL injury. Gui Santos doesn’t appear 100 percent due to knee tendinitis. Gary Payton II missed his second consecutive game Wednesday with knee inflammation.
Now Curry could be out for several games.
I’m waiting on Curry’s prognosis to write an article about how the Warriors should approach the next few days on the trade market. If they get surprisingly good news on Curry, they could be justified holding off on a Porzingis trade.
But at the moment, it certainly feels like they can’t go much longer without acquiring another healthy body.
Two trade ideas I previously wrote about are acquiring Jalen Smith and Isaac Okoro from the Bulls or Wendell Carter Jr. and Jamal Cain from the Magic.
Add us as a preferred source on Google
