Warriors Will Go With Ezeli At Center If Bogut Can't Play Monday
By Randy Renner, Senior Writer
The Golden State Warriors had hoped starting center Andrew Bogut would have been able to practice Saturday but instead he was limited to some work on a stationary bike and shooting some free throws.
Bogut strained his groin area (right adductor) during Wednesday’s Game 5 of the Warriors-Blazers series and was not able to return to game action and he’s been unable to practice since.
“I think he made some improvement in the training room,” head coach Steve Kerr told reporters after Saturday’s practice. “But we didn’t want him to get up and down on the floor and risk hurting it further. It was better to rest him and hopefully he’ll be able to practice (Sunday).”
Now the hope is he will be able to do some more strenuous work during Golden State’s practice today because it will be the last real chance he has of showing he can move around decently. The Warriors are not planning to have a shootaround session on Monday morning before Monday night’s Game 1 against the Thunder.
“It’s a weird schedule cuz it’s a 6 o’clock (Oakland time) start so no shootaround on Monday so Sunday has to kinda be our shootaround day. We had a good scrimmage (Saturday) to get up and down the floor to get some rhythm and keep our flow going.”
Kerr indicated to the media he would start backup Festus Ezeli if Bogut is unable to play.
So far in the playoffs Bogut has started all 10 of the Warriors games. He’s averaging 5.1 points on 64.9 percent shooting and 7.0 rebounds. Ezeli has played in nine games and is averaging 4.7 points on 58.6 percent shooting and 3.6 rebounds.
Marreese Speights, who’s hurt the Thunder before, and Anderson Varejao would also likely log minutes, especially if Bogut can’t play and the Thunder stay with a bigger lineup.
“Yeah, I would think both those guys would play and of course we can go Draymond (Green) too at the center of we want.”
Green is also a bit banged up with a slightly sprained ankle but he’s been full go in the last couple of practices. Steph Curry still isn’t 100 percent either from his sprained knee but he’s also not appeared hampered in practice.
“We’ve got a lot of options, a lot of depth,” Kerr said when talking about his bigs. “The good thing is we’ve had to play without a lot of people this year and we’ve had to adapt to that, so we’ll figure it out.”