As the Nuggets shift gears into the second half of their season, it’s time to start thinking about the postseason and the ultimate goal: navigating the Western Conference playoffs and reaching the Finals. It’s too soon for the players to be thinking about seeding and matchups, but it’s never too early for fans.
The West is such a gauntlet this season, especially at the top, so securing the path of least resistance will be as crucial as ever. One team that is looming as a potential first-round opponent for the Nuggets would be the Warriors, winners of four championships in the past decade.
That team has changed a lot, but as long as they have Steph Curry running the offense, Draymond Green running the defense, and Steve Kerr at the helm, that’s a team you’d rather avoid, if possible. They may be the old guard, but they have championship pedigree, and at full strength, they’re never an easy opponent.
Unfortunately for them, the full-strength part may now be a pipe dream as their star acquisition from last year’s trade deadline, Jimmy Butler, suffered a torn ACL on Monday night, ending his season. It’s a devastating blow for a team that was already grasping at straws to stay in contention, and this could be the death blow.
Warriors all but eliminated from Western Conference contention
There’s no reasonable pivot for the Warriors, who have now lost their second-best player, a 36-year-old star making almost $55 million this season. Perhaps they can move his contract for a player, but things will now become very complex for Golden State, and it’s hard to imagine a path forward that leads to tangible playoff success this season.
The Warriors are just the eighth seed in the West at the moment, but they’ve been surging of late, winning four straight and six of their last seven, pulling to within just 2.5 games of the top four. They were trending in the right direction and starting to look like a team that nobody wants to play come playoff time, but with one ugly fall for Butler, that’s all but over.
We’ll see what the front office chooses to do from here. They’ve got a Jonathan Kuminga debacle to figure out, which is now complicated by this injury, and they’ve got a generational talent in Steph Curry, still playing at an All-NBA level at age 37.
They can’t exactly rebuild. And they can’t turn around and fix this on the fly. It appears as though this may be a lost season for a group that cannot afford one. It’s terrible news for the Warriors, but it may have made the path to a title that much clearer for the Nuggets and the rest of the Western Conference contenders.