Kerr wants Green or Horford out there as often as possible. Saturday it was 37 of 48

Steve Kerr's plan for the middle of the floor has a rule in it, and he said the rule out loud on Monday.

"If a guy's going to play 20, which is probably about the limit or where we'd like him to average, it's just a lot easier to bring him off the bench," Kerr said after practice, per Dalton Johnson of NBC Sports Bay Area. The guy is Al Horford, who is 40. "I also like the idea of having Draymond or Al on the court as often as possible to anchor our defense. So yeah, I'm leaning that way."

Leaning that way means Stephen Curry, Brandin Podziemski, Gui Santos, Yaxel Lendeborg and Draymond Green on October 21 at the Lakers, the five that started on October 6 and again on Saturday, the two games the regulars have played since Honolulu, with Horford off the bench. Kerr said "leaning," and the opener is eight days away. He did not say settled.

Why 20 minutes puts him on the bench#

A starter who plays 20 minutes leaves 28 behind him. If Horford starts beside Green, the two overlap from the opening tip, and the 28 minutes after Horford sits fall on Green alone, or on Charles Bassey, or on a lineup with no center in it. If Horford comes in when Green goes out, the same 20 minutes cover the stretch Green is resting, and the two of them can hand the job back and forth for most of a game.

That is the arithmetic behind "as often as possible," and Saturday against Sacramento is the one game where it can be checked, because it is the only preseason game Horford has played as a reserve. He sat out the second game and did not travel for the third, which the regulars skipped.

Green played 23:04 and Horford 20:38, by NBA.com's box score, and one or the other was on the floor for 37 minutes and 32 seconds. The 6:10 together came at the end of each of the first two quarters, when Kerr brought Green back while Horford was still out there.

The 10:28 with neither is where the rest of the roster shows. For 2:19 of the second quarter, after Georges Niang replaced Green and before Horford came back, the biggest man on the floor was Lendeborg. The other 8:09 was the end of the game: Bassey replaced Horford with 8:09 left in the fourth and finished it, his only minutes of the night. Graham Ike, the two-way center who played in each of the first three games, did not play.

Horford's line was four points on 1-of-9 shooting, five rebounds, three assists and a block.

What 20 minutes looked like last season#

Kerr's number is not a new number. Horford averaged 21.6 minutes across 45 regular-season games for Golden State last season, by ESPN's game log, which rounds each game to the minute. Across his first 30 games the average was 20.0. Across his last 15, from February 5 on, it was 24.8. Kristaps Porzingis arrived at the trade deadline that week, and the minutes went up anyway.

The other half of the limit is the calendar. Golden State had 16 back-to-backs last season. Horford played one night of 12 of them and both nights of none.

The first back-to-back of this season is the second and third games: Memphis at Chase Center on October 23 and Phoenix on the road on October 24. If last season's rule holds, one of those nights is Green or Bassey rather than Green or Horford, and Green, who is 36, averaged 27.5 minutes across 68 games last season.

Three games of evidence, and two of them were halves#

Minutes from NBA.com's box scores. The October 7 game at Portland, which Curry, Green and Horford did not travel for, is left out.

In Honolulu, Horford started at center and Green at forward, and both were done at halftime by plan, so the game says nothing about how the two share a night. Against the Lakers, Green started at center and played the first half only. Saturday is the sample, and the sample is one game.

Curry's column is the other thing the table shows. He has played 12:58, 14:19 and 14:19, every second of it before halftime, for 41 minutes and 36 seconds across three games. Johnson wrote Saturday that less is more for Curry in the preseason. He is 38, and he averaged 31.0 minutes in the 43 regular-season games he played last year.

The week in front of them#

Golden State plays the Lakers on Tuesday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and Horford is not making the trip. Kerr called it planned maintenance, per Johnson, and said Horford also sat out Monday's scrimmage. Portland comes to Chase Center on Friday for the last preseason game.

Porzingis is expected at Chase Center on Tuesday afternoon, while the team is in Nevada, to meet with Rick Celebrini and the performance staff, Kerr said. He has been away from the team since camp opened for what the club has described only as a health issue. Asked whether Porzingis will be available for the opener, Kerr said that will be determined once he is back in the building. That is the whole of what the club has said.

The regular season opens against the Lakers on October 21, and by October 28 Golden State will have played four more: Memphis, Phoenix, Denver and Minnesota, with only Memphis at home. Five games in eight days, four of them on the road, and a back-to-back on nights two and three. The plan Kerr described on Monday was built for a roster that has one center who can play 20 and one whose nights at center the club wants to keep to a minimum, as Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area put it on Friday. The opening week asks the two of them to cover 48 minutes five times.

Whether Lendeborg is in the five on opening night is already on the ledger, from August 31. Kerr's "leaning" bears on that row and does not settle it.

The call: Horford averages fewer than 21.0 minutes a game across the games he appears in among Golden State's first ten, October 21 through November 7. Kerr named 20 as the number, said the bench is where a 20-minute man goes, and the club held him to 20.0 across the first 30 games last season. The case against is his last 15 games of last season at 24.8, when the center minutes had nowhere else to go, and a roster on which they still do not: Porzingis has no date, Bassey played 8:09 on Saturday, and Ike did not play. He has to appear in at least one of the ten for the call to be right.

Sources: Dalton Johnson, NBC Sports Bay Area, October 12, 2026, for Kerr's quotations on the starting five, Horford's minutes and the defense, Horford's maintenance night and Monday's scrimmage, Porzingis's expected visit to Chase Center and Kerr's answer on the opener; Johnson, October 10, 2026, for the Sacramento observations and Curry's first-half-only preseason; Anthony Slater, ESPN, October 12, 2026, for Porzingis's expected Tuesday meeting with Celebrini and the club's description of his absence; NBA.com box scores and play-by-play for the games of October 4, October 6 and October 10, 2026, for every minute, substitution and stat line, with the October 10 substitution log also read on ESPN, which carries the same times; ESPN's 2025-26 game logs for Horford, Green and Curry, with play-in games excluded, and ESPN's 2025-26 Warriors schedule for the back-to-back count; ESPN's Warriors schedule for the preseason and regular-season dates and venues; ESPN's athlete pages for the three birth dates.