Kevin Durant injury: grade 2 MCL sprain + Tibial bone bruise

I'm going to the Warriors / Rockets game in Oakland at the end of the month.

Should I damage Kevins knee for a few more weeks?

 

It's not nonsense

If you have 28 mil to spend on one player or 5 which has more risk?

It's simple math.

Last years team def could withstand a loss of any of the players and still contended


Their bench in that system was very good.

Now they barely have a bench

 

it's a big loss for sure especially with the depth they gave up. But how many situations are there where you lose your best player but the reigning mvp is actually still playing on that same team. Regular season you can get away with it and still maintain. I think they'll still finish the season as the #1 seed

 

They may. But they'll have to work for it now. With 70+ wins looking unlikely this season, I was expecting Kerr to rest a lot of guys down the stretch once they had the top seed locked up. Instead he may have to run the starters out there for heavy minutes to ensure they get home court throughout the playoffs and a much easier first round opponent(Denver, Sactown, Pelicans vs Thunder, Grizzlies, Jazz).

 

oh yeah definitely. their 3 remaining stars (just thinking to myself what a luxury ) are going to have to step up obviously with his absence.

 

The flipside is now Pop may be tempted to run his guys out there for heavy minutes too in order to catch the Warriors. The Rockets ironically may have almost nothing to play for down the stretch(aside from Harden's MVP) if they keep enough distance between themselves and Utah and the Clipper.

 

I don't think Pop changes anything he does. Pop has made it known seeding isn't as important to him and that just getting guys healthy and able to play for the playoffs is priority. They're on the opposite side of the bracket of GS anyways so 1 or 2 they wouldn't see each other until the WCF anyways.

 

Kudos to @robbie380 for calling the diagnosis last night -- MCL sprain. I love cfnet. You should have put it in a tweet, and told someone to post it. Tweet posts make you a star, for some millennial reason.

Click that red arrow in the quote above, and give him a Like.

 

I think having a better record than the cavs should be a goal.

 

Ordinarily, I'd agree. But there's a huge difference between the first and second seeds this season and I don't just mean where Game 7 is played. The first seed in the West has almost a bye to the second round. The 8th seed will be a sub-.500 team(Nuggets, Kings, Mavs, or Pelicans) that'll be lucky to take the series to 6 games.

Whereas the second seed will have to face the Thunder, Grizzlies, Clippers, or Jazz any one of which could pull off a first round upset. If the Spurs have a realistic shot at the #1 seed late in the season, Pop would have to be insane to not go after it.

 

They dodged a bullet there... Why are people thinking this opens the door for them to drop in the standings? They still have 3 all stars and you know iggy will step up.

 

Can we send Keith "Crispy Cream" Jones to Warriors for KD's "quick" recovery ?

 

They still have an amazing group of talent.

Curry
Klay
Iggy
Dray
Zaza

Is a top 2-3 starting lineup lol at worse. Bad bench just makes them a little more vulnerable but they likely get more team ball and less ISO now, not necessarily a bad thing

 

He's going to lose a lot of game shape.

 

Be cool if they fell to no 3 seed and played thunder in 1sr with Durant returning for first time.... and lose

 

That's a lot of time to miss.

 

"Possibly back" by round one means he won't be 100% at the very least by a potential 2nd round matchup.

 

They're weaker now than they were at this time last season and the season before, roster wise. Subtract Barnes, Speights, and Barbosa from those teams, add Zaza, and you basically get their current roster. If they're going to falter, now would be the time that it would happen.

 

Not excited that Durant is injured, but very excited that the Warriors are about to experience some (rare) adversity.