Warriors’ Steve Kerr drops encouraging Kristaps Porzingis injury update after All-Star break

SAN FRANCISCO– With the hope that the Golden State Warriors can get trade deadline addition Kristaps Porzingis back after extended timeoff post-All-Star break, Steve Kerr provided an encouraging injury update for the big man.

“Kristaps has been here the last handful of days, and practiced today with the team,” Kerr said, an improvement from the last update in which he was doing 5-on-5 work in the halfcourt.

“Looks good. He’s feeling good. We won’t make a determination until after tomorrow, when we practice tomorrow afternoon. We’ll get up and down the floor and scrimmage, which we didn’t do today.”

As for Stephen Curry, who has missed the last five games with patellofemoral pain syndrome in his knee, Kerr did not have much of an update on the star point guard, as the team gave him and the veterans an extra day off.

The Warriors essentially ruled him out of the last two games before the break and the All-Star break to give him as much time as possible to get his runner’s knee under control. The idea is to have him and Porzingis as healthy as possible for the 27-game sprint that awaits them down the stretch as they look to move out of the eighth seed and the play-in tournament.

They’ve succeeded with the first part of the plan. Porzingis spent the break rehabbing with the team while Curry stayed off his feet – save for an insane trick shot at All-Star weekend in LA. Now comes the evaluation of their progress, as they look to get them back for the home-run stretch.

“That’s the hope,” Kerr acknowledged. “But again, we have to– We haven’t seen Steph yet, and Kristaps needs to participate in a scrimmage first. We’ll just see how it goes tomorrow.”

What the Warriors envision for Kristaps Porzingis

As many have pointed out in the wake of the Porzingis acquisition, his size, defense, and shooting fit the kind of player the Warriors have sought out for years. Obviously, that vision requires Porzingis’s rollercoaster medical history to remain stable, but that hasn’t dampened Kerr or the Warriors’ excitement for what he can be for them.

Kerr has maintained that they would not have traded for Porzingis if they weren’t confident in his health. And while much of that confidence likely rests in the highly lauded Rick Celebrini and his top-notch medical staff, the Warriors feel outwardly confident about what Porzingis brings to the table.

“He’s an easy fit,” Kerr told reporters Wednesday evening after their first practice since the break. “You don’t have to change a whole lot. You know, the biggest difference, I guess, that he provides is his post-ups. He’s a pretty good post-up player, especially against switches. You throw him the ball at the foul line, the elbows, even the low block.”

With Porzingis, the Warriors are searching for band-aids to the gaping Jimmy Butler-sized hole in their offense. Kerr mentioned the spacing Porzingis generates will be different than what Butler offered, but is excited for his ability to play within their trademark split-actions.

“I’m actually more excited about having him in the split with somebody else having the ball,” Kerr mentioned. “When we throw him the ball in the post, we’re going to ask him to score quite a bit, but he’s such a dynamic player that you can also run pin downs for him. He can shoot it on the move. He’s not just pick and pop… So he should fit into everything we do pretty smoothly.”

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