Earlier this afternoon, the injury report for Wednesday’s Golden State Warriors – Miami Heat tilt showed the Dubs would be playing without Steph Curry (ankle), Jonathan Kuminga (knee), and Al Horford (toe/Old).
The pre-game report confirms that trio will miss the game, and downgrades the “questionable” Jimmy Butler (back) and Draymond Green (sniffles) to “out.”
To paraphrase a former Miami Heat legend, the Warriors are taking their B team to South Beach. We hope there’s a lot of lacrosse aficionados in Dade County, because they’re going to see a lot of Pat Spencer Wednesday night!
Many of these absences are no surprise. Steve Kerr is a Gregg Popovich disciple, and Coach Pop was a pioneer when it came to resting all his veterans on the last game of a punishing road trip. This is not to say that the Warriors aren’t banged up, tired, sore, homesick, road-weary, bruised, and sick of each other after nine days on the road, but this is also a classic example of an NBA “schedule loss.” The Warriors are playing their sixth road game in nine days, while the Heat have had four off days in the past seven and have been at home since Saturday morning.
For the Heat, Bam Adebayo and his sore toe are back after two weeks on the bench. Tyler Herro remains out and so does Nikola Jovic.
On the plus side for Heat fans, they get an excellent chance at a W against a team whose highest-scoring player available is Moses Moody. On the down side, they don’t get to watch Curry and miss their chance to boo Butler every time he touches the ball. They’ll likely get to see big minutes from University of Florida legend Will Richard, though the U of F campus is 400 miles away from Miami.
Plus, as Buddy Hield would tell you, with Curry and Butler out, it is Buddy Hield Time!
Heat vs. Warriors! Technically, it’s still an NBA game!
