SAN FRANCISCO– As one of the oldest teams in the NBA, the challenge for the Golden State Warriors this season will be maintaining their health over the course of 82 games. That means managing the minutes of their stars Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green, as well as strictly regimenting the games 39-year-old center Al Horford plays this year.
After the Warriors' practice Monday morning, head coach Steve Kerr reconfirmed that Horford will not play both ends on back-to-back games this season, a carryover from how the Boston Celtics and Joe Mazzulla managed the veteran center's rest.
“Al [Horford] won't play in the back-to-back,” Kerr said, referring to the upcoming back-to-back versus Denver then Portland later this week. “We announced that already, he's not going to play in any back-to-backs all year. So that changes the rotation for one of those two games, depending on which one we choose Al for.”
The Warriors have 15 back-to-back stretches this season, which pencils Horford in for missing at least 15 games strictly due to rest. Last season, Horford played 60 games for Boston, starting 42 of them. That is around the benchmark for Horford this season as he did not play more than 69 games the past four seasons but no fewer than 60.
Later, Kerr talked about the Warriors' plan for determining which end of these back-to-backs Horford will rest and how they will evaluate his health as the season progresses.
“That will be something we visit on every week. It'll be Rick [Celebrini, Warriors' VP of Player Health and Performance] and me, and the player involved, and we'll hash it out. We'll have a plan, and then the plan may get obliterated based on something happening. But we'll definitely have it mapped out each week.”
How Al Horford's back-to-back status affects Golden State's rotation
Load managing Horford is all in the quest of getting to the postseason intact and healthy. However, their plan presents important rotational questions that Kerr and the team have acknowledged. Kerr has been mostly non-committal to a set-in-stone starting five – though on Monday, Kerr did hint that he has a starting lineup finalized for the season opener against the Lakers that he declined to share.
Part of that open-endedness of the starting lineup stems from factors of how restricting Horford's minutes affects who he plays with and when in the game he's on the floor.
“It's hard to start a guy if he's only playing 20 [minutes] and [have him] finish the game,” Kerr said last week. “If he starts and finishes, he's sitting almost the entire middle part of the game, which is very awkward. So you have to factor that in; we have to factor in Draymond. I don't want him guarding seven-footers for 82 games. So we might end up with, you know, multiple starting lineups. We haven't decided.”
Moses Moody's calf injury, which will hold him out for the season opener and potentially a little longer, also complicates things because they plan for him to be their de facto POA wing defender. Kerr told reporters that he and his coaching staff have held extensive talks about the rotation.
“Some teams some years, you spend five minutes on the rotation, you see it, it's clear as day, and you move on to the next subject. We just talked for an hour today as a coaching staff on all the possible five-man combinations. This is not a clean clear look right now, especially without Moses. That's another part of the equation. The one thing I know is I feel very comfortable playing 12-13 different guys.”
Al Horford's longevity in the NBA
Regardless of their rotation question marks, Golden State will stick to their load management plan with Horford. Led by Celebrini, the Warriors are one of the strictest teams in the league when it comes to maintaining their players' health. They tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to players returning from injury, rarely rushing players back before they are 100%.
For Horford, he understands the plan to maintain his health so they can have him available when it matters.
“I feel like the performing staff and the medical group here does a really good job with that,” Horford said after the final preseason game when asked about the team's load managing plan for him.
“As soon as I got here, they've been helping me to put me in the best position to be ready to perform. And for me, it's really just staying consistent with that and that plan. And understanding we play very differently here. The game is faster and there's different challenges. For me it's making sure I'm doing everything I can to stay healthy and ready to play.”
Horford will make his regular season debut for the Warriors in Los Angeles tomorrow.
