3:41 pm: The Warriors have put out an official statement on Payton, announcing that he has a partial tear of a ligament in his left thumb and will be reevaluated in one week (Twitter link).
12:33 pm: Warriors guard Gary Payton II has a torn ligament in his left thumb and will be out indefinitely, ESPN’s Shams Charania tweets. Anthony Slater of The Athletic was the first to report that Payton had a thumb injury (Twitter link).
The Warriors will have to make do without a key part of their rotation as the postseason approaches. They’re currently tied with the Clippers for the sixth-best record in the Western Conference with a 41-31 record. The Timberwolves are lurking right behind with a 41-32 mark.
The top six teams automatically qualify for the first round in the playoffs while the next four teams in the standings have to fight through the play-in tournament.
Payton’s workload has steadily increased down the stretch. He’s averaging 11.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 1.3 steals in 21 minutes per game this month. Overall, the veteran guard has appeared in 58 games — his highest total since the 2021/22 season — with averages of 6.6 points, 3.0 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 0.8 steals in 14.9 minutes per game.
Payton, 32, will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason. Without him, the Warriors will likely lean more on Gui Santos and Pat Spencer. Regardless, his overall contributions will be tough to replace.
Mild torn ligament in his left thumb should take 6 weeks to heal.
Severity of the injury needs surgery
IMO
Warriors are likely out in the first round playoffs
Kuminga, Hield and Moody are not reliable.
Santos can step up and be Gary Payton. Besides, rotations are being shortened, and Payton wouldn’t have that large a role in the playoffs if he was healthy. Santos can cover that.
Santos provides energy like Payton, but not the defense.
xdrta, yes, agreed that Payton is the better defender, but Santos perhaps while being just a really good defender, can guard more important positions?
Payton can guard the ones, twos, and threes, which is huge and has been important to the Warriors in the past, but trying to look at the bright side, I like Santos guarding tough 3’s here on out.
He has decent size but may not be big or strong enough to cover 4’s, so we’ll keep it to being pretty good at slowing down opposing wings.
Santos is both taller, and a better shooter though.
you sure keep cheering against the warriors.
I told you all to trade him for a veteran C
what team would have given a good center for him? He had very little trade value.
And you’re still wrong
Not sure who’s more injury prone … the Ball brothers or GP2 or AD
GP2 has had an injury every single season of his pro career, and he is now 32 pushing 33. He’s cooked as a regular, but don’t tell the idiot Kerr that! Kerr thinks GP2 can play 20+ MPG with regularity (he absolutely cannot play more than 10-15 MPG).
GP2 will be missed down the stretch. Contrary to the naysayers, he’s more of an asset than a liability to this team.
It’s not looking good for the Warriors. Not that it really matters when they’re out (with OKC winning the west this season).
OKC is the best team maybe in the league but on par with Boston at least.
But they are young and still growing. I wouldn’t count out Denver.
As I’ve said a bunch of times OKC is too SGA reliant. I guess it’s the same with any team, but if he goes down the thunder go down too. They’re loaded, but he does so much of everything.., he’s like Luka was for the Mavericks. Ball handling, shooting, scoring, distributing, all of it.
Is there a team that would survive their best player going down and not being available in the playoffs?
Thunder literally have 11 players that would start for most teams in the league. In the 2 games he missed recently with JDub also out, JWill had triple doubles in blowouts.
If they don’t have another injury in the last 9 remaining games, I don’t see any team including Denver being able to get 4 wins against them.
I don’t think OKC makes it to the NBA finals this year.
Next year is a different story and they probably will with one more year of seasoning.
I see a great team and great defense and I love a lot of their players, but I also see SGA dribbling quite a bit, looking for his own shot, and his teammates standing around watching.
Coach better mix that up a little bit or the Thunder run will be washed out in 2025.
I’m fairly sure this actually helps GSW, because Kerr’s constant misuse of the very fragile GP2 into his “problem solver guy” is what has cost us all these winnable games recently. More minutes for the superior players in Kuminga, Moody, TJD, Looney, Post and Santos.
Dray Kuminga Jimmy Moody Steph
Post TJD Looney Santos Podz
Buddy, Spencer and the 2W guys
Watch Kerr play 2Way scrubs over TJD and Looney. God he’s so predictable, that’s a sure sign Kerr is washed as a HC and needs to retire.
The lineups Kerr SHOULD be playing more (Kerr has literally never used any of these lineups):
TJD Kuminga Dray Jimmy Curry
Looney Post Kuminga Jimmy Curry
Post TJD Dray Jimmy Curry
Also Buddy Hield acutally stinks worse than Moody, Gary. You need to pivot to hating how utterly useless Buddy is on offense and defense. “Buddy Buckets” now never scores at all, ever. What is the point of this guy?
All you Kerr defenders need to apologize to me:
1. Kerr broke the made of glass Melton by overplaying him, wrecking our first half.
2. Kerr breaks the made of glass GP2 every single year by overplaying him.
3. Kerr sits his far superior players, namely Jimmy and Steph, when they are on fire, leaving chances to put the game out of reach on the table, that turn wins into losses.
4. Why on earth is Kerr obseesed with playing mediocre players instead of his good ones, when the game is on the line? He has no clue about who his garbage time guys are and who his all-stars are.
I don’t care if this triggers posters on here, or makes insane chatters on here call me random names that I have no clue about what they mean: Kerr is a cancer to this team. I’m saying it. He is so clueless about everything, game tempo, matchups, subbing in and out the worst possible matchups, I’m fed up with these people who don’t know ball at all, who see “Kerr won 4 titles” and thinking he didn’t do everything possible to PREVENT those rings! They stay acting like Kerr is some genius HC when all he does is ride Steph to titles. GSW wins more rings without Kerr. Mark Jackson would have won done better. Anyone would have.
Not good huh ……. Looking like TWolves.
That should be a tough series. Both have plenty to prove. I’ll watch.