Stephen Curry being out hurt. But the roster Golden State's front office built is what let a competent NBA roster manage just 11 points from its starting five across a full half. They're the ones who need to answer for it. The torn oblique doesn't explain it.
The Spurs opened the game on an 18-0 run, the best start in franchise history, and Steve Kerr called his first timeout less than three minutes in, with San Antonio already up 12-0. A defense dismantled a team that had no answer at either end, with or without Curry on the floor.
The absences do matter. By one count, losing Curry, Jimmy Butler, Kristaps Porzingis, Moses Moody and Brandon Williams stripped out something like 94% of a baseline salary cap's worth of rotation talent. Will Richard played through a torn UCL in his thumb because the cupboard was that bare. Gui Santos was still working back from knee tendinitis. You can't field a competitive NBA team that shorthanded against anybody, let alone a Spurs team that had won ten straight games coming in.
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RatingThe injury excuse skips past something, though. This isn't the first time the stars-are-out alibi has been wheeled out for this group: Golden State went 13-26 in the games Curry missed last season. The front office never built a second or third option that scares anybody, and it shows every time Curry sits.
Look at who was supposed to be that answer on this particular night. Yaxel Lendeborg, the rookie Golden State is counting on to be a real offensive weapon, finished with almost nothing to show for a heavy workload, and admitted afterward he needed to start playing like an alpha instead of a beta. That's a 20-something prospect being honest about getting overwhelmed by Victor Wembanyama's rim protection, in a way a deeper, more experienced bench should never have let happen to him alone. Brandin Podziemski no-showed too, missing most of his shots and bleeding points every minute he was on the floor. Draymond Green picked up a flagrant foul for shoving Wembanyama out of bounds in the first half and barely played the rest of it. That's about who was in uniform and couldn't be trusted, or couldn't trust themselves.
RTGGreen said after the game that this team's spirit is better than last year's, that it's more certain of who it is without Curry. That's hard to square with a 38-point home-court beatdown where the starters combined for next to nothing offensively over a full half. Confidence doesn't show up in a box score that reads 16-for-52 on two-point shots for the entire game.
This was one night against a team playing as well as anybody in the league right now, and the Spurs earned the win, burying a shorthanded opponent the way a good team should. Golden State's front office has had years to build real depth behind its stars and kept choosing to stay thin and aging around the edges instead. The front office did that.
