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October 26, 2026
The week behind

The Warriors scored 122 on the night Curry, Green and Horford sat

Three games, three different starting fives, three losses. Curry, Green and Horford played in the two games the Warriors scored 105 and 108 in; all three sat with Podziemski on the night it scored 122. The other end allowed 127, 111 and 131 whoever was on the floor, and Lendeborg led the team in minutes every night.

CE
Cam EllisOct 26, 20264 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Stephen Curry, in the Warriors' blue road jersey with gold trim, rises for a jump shot at the top of the key as Washington's Marcin Gortat, in the Wizards' white home uniform, number 13, leaps with both arms up to contest, a crowd and the backboard behind them.

Golden State is 0-3, and the third loss came with Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Al Horford and Brandin Podziemski all in street clothes. That makes the record easy to explain and the explanation wrong. The two games the veterans played were the two the Warriors scored under 110 in. The night they sat was the night the club scored 122. The defense allowed 127, 111 and 131 and did not appear to notice who was on the floor.

Three games is three games. Here is what they held.

The three nights#

GameResultGS FGGS 3PTOpp FGWho sat
Oct. 21 at LakersL 127-10538-92 (41%)8-3646-81 (57%)Podziemski, Bassey
Oct. 23 vs. MemphisL 111-10834-83 (41%)14-4140-86 (47%)Bassey
Oct. 24 at PhoenixL 131-12241-91 (45%)17-3950-86 (58%)Curry, Green, Horford, Podziemski

Jimmy Butler, Moses Moody and Kristaps Porzingis missed all three, and Porzingis remains out indefinitely. Everything in the table is ESPN's box score.

With them#

Curry played 21 minutes in the opener and 30 against Memphis, scored 23 and 24, and went 5 of 17 from three with 18 of 18 from the line. Anthony Slater of ESPN reported before the opener that the plan was somewhere near 28 to 32 minutes a night, and the 21 came in a game the Lakers led by as many as 35.

Green played 21 and 31. He had 14 assists in the two games and nine turnovers, four in the opener and five against Memphis. Horford played 17 and 19, which is where Steve Kerr said in October he wanted him, and made 1 of 6 shots. Podziemski's one game was 33 minutes, 18 points on 7 of 17.

Together, the two games the veterans played produced 41 percent shooting both nights and 22 of 77 from three. The Memphis game was the one the club should have had: Golden State led 106-94 with 3:47 left and did not make another field goal. The five on the floor for that lead were Curry, Podziemski, Green, Lendeborg and De'Anthony Melton, by ESPN's play-by-play, with Horford replacing Melton at 1:24. The Called Shot filed here on Thursday had Green playing both nights of the back-to-back. He sat the second with low back soreness, and the call is graded wrong.

Without them#

Saturday's five was Brandon Williams, Will Richard, Gui Santos, Lendeborg and Graham Ike, and it was the third different starting lineup in three games. The Warriors shot 45 percent and 17 of 39 from three. Lendeborg scored 26 with six threes, Melton 25 on 8 of 13 off the bench, Williams 20 with 8 of 11 free throws in a spot start. Charles Bassey, in his first game after a knee injury, made all four of his shots in 13 minutes with seven rebounds and two blocks.

And Phoenix scored 131. Devin Booker made 17 of 25 for 43 points, the Suns scored 45 in the third quarter and 27 on the break, and 60 in the paint. The Lakers had 66 in the paint on Wednesday with Curry, Green and Horford all playing. Across the three games opponents made 136 of 253 shots, 54 percent.

So the offense was lower with the veterans than without them and the defense was poor in both conditions. One game of each is not a finding. It is the reason the 0-3 cannot be charged to Saturday's rest.

The one constant#

Yaxel Lendeborg led Golden State in minutes all three nights: 29 against the Lakers, 37 against Memphis, 36 at Phoenix. That is 102 minutes in three games. Melton and Santos are next at 68 each. Lendeborg is the only Warrior who started all three, and the fives around him have changed every night.

The rookie's shooting followed the pattern: 1 of 4 and 1 of 3 from three with the veterans, 6 of 11 without. He has two technical fouls in three games, and Kerr said after the Memphis game that he would like to see him run the floor better, per the Associated Press.

Ike has started two of the three at center. He played 12 minutes on Friday and 26 on Saturday, with 10 rebounds in the second.

Monday at Denver#

The Warriors are in Denver on Monday at 7 p.m. Pacific, then at Minnesota on Wednesday and home to the Lakers on Friday. ESPN's injury notes dated October 25 list Santos questionable with left knee tendinitis after leaving Saturday's game, Williams probable with left lower back soreness and Bassey probable with right patellar tendinopathy. Curry, Podziemski, Green and Horford are not on the report, ESPN's note on Green says, and Joey Akeley of Sports Illustrated reported the same for all four. Denver lists Cameron Johnson and Alpha Diallo doubtful and Spencer Jones and Julian Strawther out, per Akeley.

Denver beat New Orleans 141-135 in overtime on Saturday with 42 from Jamal Murray. Golden State allowed 131, 129, 117 and 116 in its four games against the Nuggets last season, by ESPN's schedule.

The read: Golden State holds at least one of Denver, Minnesota and the Lakers under 110 points this week. Last season's Warriors held opponents under 110 in 24 of 82 games, and the only Denver game of the three carries a 122-a-night offense. If all three score 110 or more, it will mean the defense Phoenix shot 58 percent against is the defense, not the second night of a back-to-back.

Sources: ESPN box scores and play-by-play for events 401909092 (October 21 at the Lakers), 401909850 (October 23 against Memphis) and 401909860 (October 24 at Phoenix) for minutes, shooting, starters, the Memphis lead and the lineups on the floor; the combined shooting figures are sums of those three boxes. The Associated Press recaps of the Memphis and Phoenix games on ESPN for Kerr's remark on Lendeborg, the technical fouls, Booker's line and the Suns' quarter. Anthony Slater, ESPN, October 20, 2026, for Curry's projected minutes. Kerr's October 12 remark on Horford's minutes from Dalton Johnson, NBC Sports Bay Area. ESPN's injury notes for Santos, Williams and Bassey, dated October 25, 2026, and ESPN's player note on Green for Monday's report; Joey Akeley, Sports Illustrated, October 25, 2026, for the four veterans and Denver's list. The Associated Press preview of Monday's game on ESPN for Denver's Saturday result and Murray's 42. ESPN's 2025-26 Warriors schedule for the 24 of 82 and the Denver scores. ESPN's 2026-27 Warriors schedule for this week's games and tip-off time.

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On the record

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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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