The Golden State Warriors will be without Stephen Curry and Kristaps Porzingis again on Monday against the Utah Jazz, but they will be getting back a key bench piece.
Seth Curry is active after missing 40 straight games with sciatica.
Al Horford (front end of back-to-back), Moses Moody (wrist) and Will Richard (ankle) are also out for the Warriors, but De’Anthony Melton is active after missing Saturday’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Jazz will be without four of their five best players. Jaren Jackson Jr. (knee), Walker Kessler (shoulder) and Jusuf Nurkic (nose) are out for the season, while Lauri Markkanen (hip) will miss his seventh straight game.
Their best healthy player, Keyonte George, is questionable with an illness. Ace Bailey is also questionable with an illness, while Isaiah Collier is out with an illness.
Warriors Must Take Care of Business
The Warriors’ remaining 19 regular-season games can be broken down like so:
– 9 games against teams that already have 39-plus wins
– 2 games against teams with 31-33 wins
– 8 games against teams with 15-26 wins
The Jazz fall into the latter category with just 19 wins. They’ve lost eight of nine.
The Warriors (32-31) need to win this game. There is a lot of value in staying in eighth for the play-in tournament. You can be sure the Clippers (31-32) and Blazers (31-34) will be taking care of business when they get easier opponents.
Expect the Warriors to play with lots of urgency.
Warriors Thinner in Frontcourt Than Usual
Without Horford and Porzinigs, the Warriors are thin at center for Monday’s game. And they’ve been thin at small forward and power forward essentially all season. So the whole frontcourt will be undermanned against Utah.
Here is Golden State’s depth chart for Monday’s game:
PG: Brandin Podziemski, Pat Spencer, LJ Cryer
SG: De’Anthony Melton, Seth Curry, Gary Payton II
SF: Gui Santos, Nate Williams
PF: Draymond Green, Malevy Leons
C: Quinten Post
The good news for the Warriors is the Jazz are not positioned well to take advantage of Golden State’s lack of depth and size.
Kyle Filipowski and Kevin Love are the only healthy traditional bigs in Utah’s rotation. Neither is the type of impact down-low scorer who can give the Warriors major problems.
Porzingis, Curry Updates
Porzingis is expected to play Tuesday against the Chicago Bulls. The official listed reason for his absence on the injury report is illness management.
Porzingis played his first game since Feb. 23 on Saturday, finishing with nine points in 23 minutes.
He’s probably not conditioned to play three games in four days, so it makes sense to give him the game off that’s in the middle.
Stephen Curry will be re-evaluated after the Bulls game. He’s missed Golden State’s last 13 games with runner’s knee. The Warriors have gone 5-8 without him.