Box score surrealism

A third of the way into the NBA season, and the Warriors are already quite banged up.  Tonight Curry, Green, Pachulia, and Young all had to convalesce.  Ordinarily, when a team loses an MVP and an All-Star it faces serious problems, but when the Warriors lose an MVP (Curry) and an All-Star (Green), they still have...an MVP (Durant) and an All-Star (Thompson).

Nevertheless, without Green and Curry they have to go to their bench, and the good news is that there is one.  I loved the mid-80s Celtics, but man, when the Hall of Famers sat down it got ugly fast.  Against the Lakers you had the likes of Greg Kite and Jerry Sichting squaring off against Mychal Thompson and Michael Cooper, and this did not lead to good outcomes.

The Warriors, by contrast, have an interesting bench full of high character role players.  They always play well, but you wonder how they'd do in real life, like if they were on a regular team?  Tonight we found out, as the Two-Star Warriors (just Durant and Thompson) were supplemented by the likes of Omri Casspi (7-9), David West (4-5), Jordan Bell (4-5), and Shaun Livingston (4-6) against the Mavericks.  That group collectively shot 19-25, or 76% from the field, Iguodala added ten assists, and the decimated Warriors won by 15.

This is nuts, just surreal.

Also:

Kevin Durant's last four games
-at Charlotte: 35 pts, 11 rebs, 10 asts, 2 blks, 13/28 FG
-at Detroit: 36 pts, 10 rebs, 7 asts, 5 blks, 12/23 FG
-vs Blazers: 28 pts, 9 rebs, 5 asts, 3 blks, 11/21 FG
-vs Mavericks: 36 pts, 11 rebs, 7 asts, 3 blks, 15/23 FG

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) December 15, 2017