yahoo - 3/2/2026 9:02:13 PM - GMT (+2 )
When Jimmy Butler went down for the season, the Golden State Warriors were in eighth place in the Western Conference, 2.5 games out of a top-six spot and five games clear of 11th place, smack in the middle of the play-in tournament mix.
When Stephen Curry went out with the lingering knee injury that has cost him the last month, the Warriors were … in eighth place in the West, three games out of a top-six spot and 7.5 games clear of 11th, smack in the middle of the play-in tournament mix.
And as they enter March, with a Monday tilt against a Los Angeles Clippers team that has kind of given up the ghost but is still chasing Golden State in the standings, the Warriors sit — you guessed it — in eighth place in the West, five games out of a top-six spot and 7.5 games clear of 11th. Smack in the middle of the play-in tournament mix.
Stuck in the middle, really. And overall just … stuck.
With five games separating them from the sixth-place Lakers and 7.5 games separating them from the 11th-place Grizzlies, the Warriors are overwhelmingly likely to land in the play-in tournament for the third straight season. Most public-facing projection models see them finishing with the No. 7 or 8 seed, with just a snowball’s chance of climbing up into the top six — about 1% on Inpredictable, 7% on ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, 8% on Basketball Reference, 14% on Dunks and Threes — and virtually no shot of falling out of the top 10.
The Warriors own the head-to-head tiebreaker over Phoenix, having won three of the four meetings between the two teams. But the Suns remain three games ahead of Golden State in the Western standings, holding on to the No. 7 seed — the most favorable position in the play-in tournament, since it affords you both the chance to advance to the postseason proper with just one win and the right to host any play-in games in which you appear.
Golden State enters Monday’s action 2.5 games ahead of the ninth-place Clippers. The two teams have split their first two regular-season meetings, so Monday’s winner will get a leg up in the season series, with the final matchup coming in the regular-season finale on April 12. The Dubs are also three games ahead of the 10th-place Trail Blazers, though Portland holds the head-to-head tiebreaker, taking the season series 3-1.
The degree to which the Warriors now appear landlocked — extremely unlikely to climb in the standings, but even more unlikely to meaningfully drop — makes them feel like a team in limbo, unmoored, kind of treading water and hoping to stay afloat long enough for things to start mattering again. The question is whether that point will come this season.
It is not exactly revelatory to say that a team missing its two best players will struggle, and that’s precisely what’s happened in Golden State. The Warriors have gone 6-10 since Butler tore his ACL, and they’re 4-6 since Curry’s knee flared up — a persistent ailment that’s expected to cost him at least another handful of games.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of the only two star-level offensive players on the roster, several Warriors have done their level best to fill the gap. Moses Moody has taken advantage of increased opportunities to shoot and create, launching more than eight triples a night and averaging 15.9 points per game on 49/41/80 shooting splits since the start of February. Forward Gui Santos, long a favorite of head coach Steve Kerr for the way he reads the game, has stuffed the stat sheet in a more significant role, averaging 15.1 points, 5.7 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.5 steals per game while shooting 70% inside the arc and 41.3% beyond it — a strong extended stretch that helped earn him a three-year, $15 million contract extension.
There have been moments: a road win in Phoenix keyed by Pat Spencer drilling a half-dozen triples; Brandin Podziemski’s fourth-quarter surge against Denver; a “Strength in Numbers”-era-evoking win in Memphis, with nine Warriors scoring at least nine points. On the heels of dispiriting losses like Saturday’s 28-point blowout at the hands of the Lakers, though, it becomes difficult to believe that those moments, and whatever growth the Moodys and Santoses of the world have shown while treading water, will amount to all that much.
For the season, Golden State has been outscored by 3.6 points per 100 possessions with neither Curry nor Butler on the court, according to PBP Stats, with an offense that produces fewer points-per-100 than the Tyrese Haliburton-less Pacers have managed over the course of the full season. Since the start of February, the Warriors rank 21st in offensive efficiency and 19th on the defensive end, getting outscored by nearly five points-per-100 possessions. The only teams with worse net ratings in that span are tankers — Brooklyn, Chicago, Sacramento, Washington, Dallas and Indiana — and the Suns, themselves operating without leading scorers Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks.
The optimistic take: Getting a healthy Curry back will offer at least some level of cure for what’s ailed an offense currently built around Spencer and Podziemski pick-and-rolls, De’Anthony Melton drives, Al Horford post-ups, and a metric ton of 3-point attempts. (Nearly 52% of Golden State’s shots have come from long distance in the past month — the highest share of any team in the league in that span.) Combine a healthy Steph with a healthy Kristaps Porziņģis, who came to the Bay at the trade deadline in the move that sent Jonathan Kuminga to Atlanta, and maybe the Warriors have enough juice to put a scare into a higher-seeded squad in Round 1.
It’s unclear just how much optimism is sensible to harbor, though. The 30-year-old Porziņģis has appeared in just one of the Warriors’ nine games since the trade, as he continues to deal with a debilitating illness that has affected him on and off for more than a year; at this point, it seems more reasonable to expect little to nothing from him the rest of the way than it is to bank on his availability. And while Curry, not far removed from being named to his 12th All-Star team, remains an incandescent offensive talent, his presence alone has not been a panacea for these Warriors; in the 629 minutes that Steph has played without Butler this season, Golden State has been outscored by 18 points.
This is the profile of an also-ran; without Butler, and without the theoretical hoped-for version of Porziņģis, the Warriors just don’t have enough top-end talent to mount a credible threat to contend for a championship. With Steph, though, they can at least sell themselves on the idea of playing “meaningful basketball” come springtime — at getting into elimination games, games with real stakes, a chance to advance to the big dance and see if No. 30 can once again give you a puncher’s chance against the best teams out West.
To get to those games, though, the Warriors have to keep treading water, keep staying alive, keep just surviving somehow. It’s admittedly a more meager goal than the four-time champions had hoped to be striving for; even so, a win against the Clippers would go a long way toward achieving it.
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