LOS ANGELES \u2014 Golden State Warriors swingman Moses Moody will be held out of the rest of the team\u2019s preseason games because of a calf strain, but the Warriors are optimistic he will be ready for the season opener against the Los Angeles Lakers on Oct. 21.<\/p>\n
Moody had an MRI on his left calf Saturday, which revealed the strain, a decision the Warriors felt was precautionary after he tweaked the calf in practice.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll re-evaluate in a week or so,\u201d\u00a0Warriors coach Steve Kerr said before Sunday\u2019s game against the Lakers.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re not too concerned about it, it\u2019s just we\u2019re being careful with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warriors star guard Stephen Curry (rest) also sat out of Sunday\u2019s game but is expected to play in Tuesday\u2019s preseason game against the Portland Trail Blazers. Same goes for veteran big man Al Horford (rest). Jimmy Butler III, excused for personal reasons, also did not play Sunday but is expected to play Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Kerr said after Sunday\u2019s game that Draymond Green (rest) will not play Tuesday night in Portland. The Warriors\u2019 final preseason game is Friday at home against the LA Clippers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the goal, that\u2019s the job this year is to manage,\u201d Kerr said of trying to balance finding a rhythm while trying to get his veteran players some rest along the way. \u201cEspecially those four (Curry, Butler III, Horford and Green). Manage their minutes, games played, figuring out combinations if a couple of them can\u2019t play. If we\u2019re in a back-to-back, if we need to rest a couple, we got to figure all that stuff out. That\u2019s the job, and we collaborate with them, with the performance staff, and we go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Third-year guard Brandin Podziemski tried to pick up the slack in Sunday night\u2019s 126-116 loss to the Lakers, scoring 23 points, dishing out eight assists and pulling down five rebounds in 26 minutes. Given Moody\u2019s short-term absence, Kerr was asked whether Podziemski, who started in the last two preseason games, would be penciled into the starting lineup in the first regular-season game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say that yet,\u201d Kerr said after Sunday\u2019s game. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to see where we are. Brandin (Podziemski) is going to play a ton. He\u2019s a hugely important player for us. But the starting lineup, frankly, is a little tricky for us. Just given the pieces, Al\u2019s age. If Al (Horford) were a little younger, he\u2019d be in the starting lineup for sure. But if he\u2019s gonna play limited minutes, it\u2019s tougher to start him and finish the game if he\u2019s not playing as many minutes as he would have a few years ago. So we still have a lot to think about, but Brandin\u2019s gonna be a huge part of it one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 Golden State Warriors swingman Moses Moody will be held out of the rest of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5552,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-209567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}