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October 24, 2026
The back-to-back

Curry and Podziemski are not expected at Phoenix, a night after Ike started

Golden State plays the second half of its first back-to-back on Saturday, and both starting guards said Friday they probably will not be on the floor. Graham Ike, on a two-way contract, started the night before against Memphis. The Warriors are 0-2.

GL
Grant LombardOct 24, 20264 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.

Eight days ago Steve Kerr told Warriors fans to read the schedule before buying tickets, because on back-to-backs the club does not play Stephen Curry. The first back-to-back finishes Saturday night in Phoenix. It is game three.

"Probably not, but I'll talk to the staff," Curry said Friday night, per Kevin Topley of NBC Sports Bay Area. Asked whether the issue was his body or his energy, he smiled and said, "I think you know the answer to that."

Anthony Slater of ESPN reported the same thing in plainer words: Curry is expected to rest. Slater also reported that Brandin Podziemski will miss the game with back soreness, the same complaint that kept him out of the opener at the Lakers.

"No, I won't play tomorrow," Podziemski said, per Topley. "Just tweaked it a little bit, nothing too serious."

So the Warriors go to Phoenix at 0-2 without either of the guards who started Friday.

Who is left#

The list of people who were already not going was long. Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody are rehabbing knee injuries. Kristaps Porzingis is out indefinitely. Charles Bassey was ruled out Friday with a knee injury, by ESPN's injury report for that game, and nothing posted overnight says whether he is back for Saturday.

Al Horford is the other name to watch. Nick Friedell of The Athletic reported before the season that Horford, who is 40, is not playing back-to-backs. He played 19 minutes on Friday.

Take Curry, Podziemski, Horford and those four away, and the roster that remains is Draymond Green, Yaxel Lendeborg, Graham Ike, De'Anthony Melton, Gui Santos, Gary Payton II, Georges Niang, Brandon Williams and Will Richard, plus two-way players LJ Cryer and Malevy Leons. (Eleven names, and one of the eleven started at center the night before.)

The center they started Friday#

Which brings it back to Ike.

Kerr started him Friday against Memphis. Ike is an undrafted rookie on a two-way contract, signed September 21, and the game was his second in the NBA. Gui Santos, who started the opener, came off the bench. ESPN's game recap, from the Associated Press, said the Warriors started Ike to deal with Memphis's size, and that his start gave Golden State two rookie starters in a home opener for the first time since the league began recording starters in 1970-71. Lendeborg was the other.

He played 12 minutes. He made 4 of 7 shots, both of his threes, and scored 10 points with two offensive rebounds. Zach Edey, the reason he was out there, finished with 10 rebounds in 22 minutes.

Ike also played 12 minutes in the opener. Two games, 24 minutes, 18 points. Small sample, and it is also every NBA minute he has.

Two-way players can be active for 50 of the 82 games. Golden State has now used two of Ike's, and with Horford's rule and Bassey's knee, Saturday looks like a third.

How Friday got away#

The Warriors led 106-94 after Melton made a three with 3:47 left. They missed nine shots after that and did not make another field goal. Memphis scored the next 17 points, and Cameron Boozer, the third pick in June, hit the go-ahead jumper with 20 seconds left.

"Eight different things had to happen," Kerr said, per Slater. "If any one of those eight doesn't happen, I think we win. It was just an avalanche."

Curry played 30 minutes and scored 24. Podziemski played 33 and scored 18.

Kerr said before the opener that the club would manage several veterans because "it's the only way we can do this," per Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area. The first test of that came in the first week, at 0-2, and it arrived with the club's most durable guard hurt as well. After Phoenix come Denver on Monday and Minnesota on Wednesday: four games in six nights.

Tip-off is 7 p.m. Pacific.

Sources: Curry's and Podziemski's remarks from Kevin Topley, NBC Sports Bay Area, October 24, 2026. Curry's expected rest, Podziemski's back soreness and Kerr's "avalanche" quotation from Anthony Slater, ESPN, October 24, 2026. Kerr's October 15 remarks on back-to-backs from Monte Poole, NBC Sports Bay Area. Horford and back-to-backs from Nick Friedell, The Athletic, as relayed by Hoops Rumors on October 21. Bassey's status and the Butler, Moody and Porzingis listings from ESPN's injury report for the Memphis game. Ike's contract and signing date from the NBA transaction log and Hoops Rumors' two-way tracker, which is also the source for the 50-game limit. The reason for Ike's start, the 1970-71 note, the late sequence and the game details from the Associated Press recap on ESPN. Minutes, shooting and rebounds for both games from ESPN's box scores, read 3:00 a.m. Pacific on October 24. Schedule and tip-off time from ESPN's Warriors schedule.

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On the record

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OpenAug 10, 2026

Golden State's apron-basis team salary is still above the first apron of $209,015,000 on opening night of the 2026-27 season.

This is the behavioural half of my own argument and it is the part that can be wrong. The legal analysis is not a prediction: while the Warriors sit at $216,439,590 in apron allocations, the mid-level, the bi-annual and the Jackson-Davis trade exception are all barred, and that follows from published rules rather than from my judgment. What is a judgment is that the club leaves it that way. NOTE REWRITTEN 2026-08-10 by Cam Ellis, claim and resolve_by unchanged: the original note named the routes out as Moses Moody's $12,500,000 or two of Al Horford, Yaxel Lendeborg, De'Anthony Melton and Brandin Podziemski, and that list was built off a roster read that omitted Kristaps Porzingis. Porzingis is on this roster at $20,000,000, his contract is inside the $216,439,590, and he is trade-eligible through the offseason because his June 30 extension does not exceed the extend-and-trade limits, so he is the largest movable route under the apron rather than an absent one. The list was also missing the calendar: Bassey, Draymond Green, Horford, Melton and Payton II cannot be traded until December 15, which is five of the thirteen standard contracts and two of the four mid-sized salaries the original note leaned on. So the call is now made against a wider set of legal routes than I first counted, which makes it a harder call rather than an easier one. I am still calling that Golden State does not pay a rotation player to unlock an exception that would immediately hard-cap it at the line it just crossed under. Scoreable against any published opening-night cap sheet on the apron basis, which is the basis that includes likely incentives. If they get under, I am wrong, and the whole piece was describing a temporary condition rather than the season's shape.

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