Warriors Starter Ruled Out Hours Before Spurs Game

The Golden State Warriors ruled out Gui Santos with a pelvic contusion about three hours before Wednesday's game against the San Antonio Spurs at Chase Center.

Santos is the eighth Warrior to be ruled out. He joins Stephen Curry (knee), Al Horford (calf), De'Anthony Melton (thumb), Kristaps Porzingis (illness management), Quinten Post (foot), Moses Moody (season-ending knee injury) and Jimmy Butler (season-ending knee injury).

Gary Payton II (knee) is listed as questionable.

Even if Payton plays, the Warriors will have just 10 players active.

Warriors' Depleted Depth Chart vs. Spurs

Golden State has serious frontcourt depth issues for Wednesday's game.

PG: Brandin Podziemski, Pat Spencer
SG: Seth Curry, LJ Cryer, Gary Payton II (questionable)
SF: Will Richard, Nate Williams
PF: Malevy Leons
C: Draymond Green, Omer Yurtseven

My guess is Steve Kerr will go with a super-small starting lineup instead of starting Leons at the 4, but over the course of the game, Leons, Willams and Yurtseven are going to play big minutes out of necessity.

Outside of Green, nobody on the Golden State roster has much of a chance of bothering MVP candidate Victor Wembanyama.

Though the Spurs don't have a bruising power forward who can take advantage of the Warriors' lack of size, they haver big wings in Harrison Barnes (6'7") and Keldon Johnson (6'6") as well as physical guards in Stephon Castle (6'6") and Dylan Harper (6'5").

Richard (6'3") will be undersized against all of them.

Suffice to say, the Spurs are massive favorites.

Steph Update

ESPN's Anthony Slater wrote on X that the Warriors announced that Curry is likely to participate in another scrimmage later this week before he's evaluated this weekend.

That jibes with reporting over the last 24 hours that suggests Curry is targeting a Sunday return against the Houston Rockets.

Curry participated in a scrimmage on Tuesday for the first time since injury his knee on Jan. 30 against the Detroit Pistons.

The Warriors require that their players scrimmage before returning from a long-term injury.

Golden State is being cautious with Curry presumably because it doesn't want him to have a setback.

"The other issue to monitor is how the knee responds to several days of intensive activity," UCSF professor Dr. Nirav Pandya wrote on X. "It can feel great after 1-2 scrimmages but the return to high level NBA basketball games can cause symptoms to flare back up."

Hopefully Curry's knee holds up if/when he returns to game action this season.