Despite an injury to Stephen Curry sustained earlier in the week, the Golden State Warriors were able to push their record to 4-1 with back to back wins over the New Orleans Pelicans, thanks in large part to the defensive greatness of Draymond Green. While the Pelicans were also shorthanded in the second of the two game set, it was still a resilient effort from the Warriors to perform so well without their best player in the lineup.

The Warriors of course are in their first year in over a decade without Klay Thompson on the roster. Thompson bolted for the Dallas Mavericks this offseason after a rough end to his Golden State tenure and has gotten off to a strong start for his new team.

Recently, former NBA guard Gilbert Arenas shared that he is still perplexed by why the Warriors opted to let the future Hall of Famer walk, per the Gil's Arena Show podcast.

“I feel bad for Klay, because he shot 38 percent from the three point line last year, 43 from the field, 92 from the free throw line, averaged 18 points,” said Arenas. “If you take his name off of his stats, everybody is lining up. ‘Give me him.' 30, 40 million per year. Buddy Hield is playing very well right now. If he had Klay's stats coming in, y'all would have gave that man 120 (million). When you really want to make what he's doing irrelevant, you look at what you want to look at.”

Indeed, some blamed Klay Thompson's embarrassing scoreless performance against the Sacramento Kings in the play-in round last season as perhaps sticking out too much in the Warriors' minds over the solid statistics that he put up throughout the season.

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What is the Warriors' ceiling this year?

Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images

As Arenas pointed out, Buddy Hield has assimilated quite well into the Warriors' system under head coach Steve Kerr, including an epic scoring outburst in the fourth quarter in the first game against the Pelicans.

Curry wasn't necessarily putting up superhuman numbers in the first few games in which he was healthy, but he didn't need to, as the Warriors' depth showed up in full force in both contests.

Whether all of that will be enough to compete with some of the juggernauts in the Western Conference, including the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are one of the NBA's only remaining undefeated teams, remains to be seen.

However, most Golden State fans likely would take a 4-1 start to the season, especially if you told them that Curry would be missing for two of those games.