The Golden State Warriors will take a new approach to a back-to-back when veteran Al Horford returns to face the Los Angeles Clippers in a Pacific Division showdown Tuesday night in San Francisco.
The Warriors will be playing their second two-games-in-two-nights sequence of the young season, having beaten the Denver Nuggets at home before falling to the Portland Trail Blazers on the road on consecutive days last week.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr elected to use Horford in the opener of the back-to-back that time. He played 29 minutes and contributed 13 points, including an overtime 3-pointer, to a 137-131 victory.
Without Horford on the second night, Golden State ran out of gas against the Trail Blazers, getting run out of the gym 139-119.
Kerr explained before Monday’s 131-118 home win over the Memphis Grizzlies that he’s a long way from deciding long-range starting lineups and rotations, in part because of the uncertainty of how veterans Horford, Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler III and Draymond Green will deal with the rigors of an early schedule that features five back-to-backs before Thanksgiving.
“(It’ll take) the team probably 20 games (before stats can be analyzed),” he told reporters. “Lineup combinations, a lot longer than that because each game you’re only playing lineups for five or six minutes together, maybe eight or 10 minutes.”
The Warriors have added a key piece since their last back-to-back, when Moses Moody sat out the opener with a strained calf. He’s played the two games since and made his biggest contribution Monday against the Grizzlies, shooting 5-for-7 on 3-pointers en route to 20 points off the bench.
Moody had been projected as a starter at the start of the season, but his injury, the impressive play of Jonathan Kuminga and the inconsistency of Horford’s availability have impacted that plan.
A team known to rest its veteran players as much as any, the Clippers have yet to endure their first back-to-back. They were surprised 129-108 on opening night at Utah, then enjoyed a day off before each of a pair of home wins over the Phoenix Suns and Trail Blazers.
They also had Monday off leading into the trip north.
The Clippers used the same starting lineup of James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Ivica Zubac, Bradley Beal and Derrick Jones Jr. in their first two games. Beal strained his back in Friday’s win over the Suns and was replaced by Bogdan Bogdanovic for Sunday’s victory over the Trail Blazers.
Beal already has been ruled out of Tuesday’s game.
While Clippers coach Tyronn Lue has settled, when healthy, on his starting lineup, Harden noted that opposing teams don’t know where you’re going to be attacked by the Clippers, who have had different leading scorers in each of their first three games.
“We’re very, very talented. We pose a lot of different mismatches depending on who we’re playing against,” Harden told the media. “So one thing about us as we go further in the season, we learn who we are, we learn what works against different teams, and then we go from there.”
Led by Harden’s 92 total points, the Clippers swept the Warriors 4-0 in the 2024-25 season series.
