Warriors injuries pile up with Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler out

SAN FRANCISCO — Will Richard wore a walking boot on his right foot. Moses Moody jammed his wrist and banged his shoulder and watched most of the second half from the locker room.

And those were just the players not already on the Warriors’ injury report before this week.

The attrition continued to catch up to an undermanned Golden State squad, which allowed a 17-point lead to evaporate Monday night in a 114-101 loss to the Clippers.

Steve Kerr took it a step further afterward, describing the Warriors as “severely” undermanned. He’s not wrong when his team has no idea when Steph Curry or Kristaps Porzingis will play again — and, in Jimmy Butler’s case, knows it will not be until next season.

The fact that the Warriors were able to zoom out to a 44-27 advantage was probably more notable than a team led by Kawhi Leonard outscoring them 87-57 the rest of the way.

The 17-point lead before halftime was the biggest the Warriors have relinquished this season.

Afterward, Kerr praised Leonard as “probably the best player in the league for the last month.” The same couldn’t be said for anybody in uniform for the Warriors at any point in their careers.

The boisterous Brandin Podziemski might disagree, and he at least looked like arguably the best player on the floor while scoring 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting in the first half. But he disappeared after intermission and contributed only one more basket — a potential three-point play that he couldn’t convert at the foul line.

Draymond Green was attached to Leonard at the hip and contained him to eight points and only six shot attempts in the first half. But Green wore down, and Leonard extended his streak of scoring 20 or more to a 38th consecutive game, scoring 15 while going 6-of-8 from the field as the Clippers outscored the Warriors 72-45 in the second half.

Matching substitution patterns almost to a tee, the Warriors finished minus-18 during Green’s minutes; the Clippers were plus-16 with Leonard on the court.

“Draymond’s effort and energy set the tone for the whole first half,” Kerr said. “He was all over the place, flying around. We were really able to contain Kawhi because of Draymond. …

“It’s tough to sustain that kind of effort for 48 minutes when you’re severely undermanned.”

In the rare instances Green got switched off Leonard, the matchup more often than not fell on Nate Williams, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard the Warriors signed to a two-way contract Feb. 17.

In the absence of competitive basketball, there are at least good stories, and Williams is one of them. The 27-year-old product of nearby Prolific Prep (Napa) dropped a career-high 18 points in his second game with Golden State — his fourth in four days between the NBA and the G League.

Asked about matching up against Leonard, Williams said, “He bleeds just like I bleed.”

“I don’t fear no challenge. … I fear God. That’s the only man I fear,” he said. “I’m from Rochester, New York, in the back streets. If you go in my neighborhood, you would know why I’m this way.”

It was a big week in more ways than one for Williams.

“And he just had a baby,” Kerr said. “I don’t know if I was supposed to announce that or not.”

Williams scored 13 of his points after halftime and earned a good chunk of that playing time filling in for Moody, who went to the bench at the end of the third quarter and didn’t return.

The Warriors didn’t have much information after the game on Moody, who went diving to the floor and collided with Darius Garland in a play that left both players briefly shaken up.

Richard, who was ruled out after rolling his right ankle Saturday against the Lakers, is considered day-to-day.

It’s all probably moot without Curry, who won’t return until next Wednesday at the earliest. He missed his 11th consecutive game with an overuse injury commonly known as runner’s knee, and Golden State fell to 8-14 this season without the two-time MVP.

Curry has described the injury as “a weird one” and “unpredictable” — and that’s not even the biggest unknown on the Warriors’ injury report. It appeared as though Porzingis was trending toward returning when he practiced Friday, but has since missed two more games — five total — with a medical issue that Kerr described as “a little mysterious.”

It doesn’t get any easier for the Warriors, who now head to Houston to face the Rockets on Thursday before a matchup against the best-in-the-West Thunder in Oklahoma City on Saturday.

Golden State (31-30) could be below .500 by the time it arrives in Utah to face the Jazz in a gettable third and final game of the road trip. The good news is that they can only fall so far; there’s little chance any of the tanking teams below the 10th seed overtake the Warriors.

“We’ve just got to suit up and try to win games,” Podziemski said. “We can’t worry about the uncertainties or unknowns of the season. At least that’s how I try to approach it.”

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