The Warriors have one center who shoots threes, one night at a time
Kristaps Porzingis is out indefinitely and did not travel to camp. Steve Kerr says the offense is going five-out. That leaves the job to Al Horford, who is 40 and who last season played both nights of a back-to-back zero times in 16 chances. The first back-to-back of 2026-27 is the second and third games of the season.
Here is Golden State's center position on the first morning of training camp, in one sentence: the only center on the roster who shoots threes is 40 years old, and last season he did not play two nights in a row.
Not once. Sixteen chances.
What the club said, and what it did not#
Kristaps Porzingis is out indefinitely. General manager Mike Dunleavy opened media day at Chase Center on Monday with the news, and he did not dress it up.
"He'll miss the start of camp here," Dunleavy said, per Danny Emerman of The San Francisco Standard. "Don't have a timeline for him or anything further than that. So we're a little banged up to start, but we've got plenty of depth. We'll get through it."
The club learned of it on Sunday. Porzingis had been at the practice facility the week before, and he was "doing well and everything" then, Dunleavy said, per Brian Martin of NBA.com. He did not fly to Hawaii with the team. The Warriors have not said what the health issue is, and Dunleavy declined to connect it to anything in Porzingis's medical history.
Five-out needs a fifth#
The same morning, Steve Kerr described the offense he wants.
"We're playing a more modern brand of basketball now, five-out," Kerr said, per Emerman. "Draymond will find himself on the perimeter more."
Five-out means five players standing behind the three-point line, which means the center has to be a player a defense will follow out there. That is a short list on this roster, and it just got shorter. Basketball Reference lists three centers on Golden State's camp roster, and here is how often each of them shot a three:
Porzingis took 74 threes in 356 minutes for Golden State after the February trade, and made 23 of them. Al Horford took 205 in 969 minutes and made 74, a .361 clip. Charles Bassey has taken 13 threes in 1,410 minutes across five NBA seasons, and made three.
(Bassey is 6-foot-10 and 25 years old and blocked seven shots in 100 minutes for the Warriors last season. He is useful. He is not a five-out center, and nobody is asking him to be.)
Kerr has other shapes available. He said Monday that the rookie Yaxel Lendeborg "can guard bigs," and Draymond Green could slide to center. But Kerr just told everyone that Green is moving out to the perimeter, which is the opposite direction. The five-out center, with Porzingis gone, is Horford.
Horford turned 40 in June.
The rule that came with him#
When Horford signed in the summer of 2025, the Warriors carried over an arrangement he had in Boston: he would not play on consecutive days. Kerr picked which night each time (mostly by matchup, he said then, "but later on, it may be health"). Before a game against Memphis in October 2025, with Horford held out so he could face the Clippers the next night, Kerr put the whole policy in two sentences, per Evan Webeck of the Bay Area News Group.
"We could have used him tonight against J.J., too. But we can only have him for one game, obviously."
Obviously. The club was not bluffing. Golden State played 16 back-to-backs in the 2025-26 regular season. Horford's game logs at Basketball Reference and at ESPN agree on what he did with them: he played one of the two nights 12 times, neither night four times, and both nights zero times.
Nobody said Monday whether that rule carries into his 20th season. Nothing about turning 40 argues for loosening it.
October 23 and 24#
The Warriors open at the Lakers on Wednesday, October 21. Game two is Memphis at Chase Center on Friday, October 23. Game three is at Phoenix on Saturday, October 24 (which is the next night, for anyone keeping a 40-year-old's calendar).
That is a back-to-back in the first week of the season, and if the rule holds, one of those two nights has no center on the roster who shoots from the perimeter. Kerr gets to choose which one, same as last year. He just does not get a second shooter to hand the other night to, unless Porzingis is back by then. The club has not said whether he will be, and it has said plainly that it does not know.
Cam Ellis has an open Called Shot that Stephen Curry, Green, Horford and Porzingis combine for fewer than 200 regular-season games. The back-to-back rule is part of the arithmetic that call already contains.
The rest of the list#
Jimmy Butler (ACL) and Moses Moody (patella), both recovering from knee surgery, flew to Hawaii. Dunleavy gave no timeline for either. "They're progressing well," he said, per NBA.com. "It's hard to determine exactly when they'll be back at this stage of the rehab."
Horford was asked about Porzingis, his teammate in Boston and again here. "Patience is kind of like the name of the game right now," he said, per NBA.com.
Patience is one thing. The other thing is the schedule, and it has the Grizzlies and the Suns on consecutive nights.
Anyway. Somebody on this roster is going to be standing at the top of the key on October 24, and on current evidence it will not be the man who stood there the night before.
Sources: Danny Emerman, The San Francisco Standard, September 28, 2026, for Dunleavy's and Kerr's media-day quotations; Brian Martin, NBA.com, September 29, 2026, for Dunleavy on Porzingis, Butler and Moody and for Horford's quotation; Kurt Helin, NBC Sports, September 28, 2026, and Janie McCauley, The Associated Press via NBA.com, September 29, 2026, confirming Porzingis's status and travel; Evan Webeck, Bay Area News Group, October 27, 2025, for Kerr on Horford's back-to-back policy; Basketball Reference for the 2025-26 Golden State schedule, team totals, Horford's game log, Bassey's career totals and the 2026-27 roster and schedule; ESPN for Horford's 2025-26 game log and the 2026-27 regular-season and preseason schedule.
