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The Golden State Warriors will face the Minnesota Timberwolves tonight looking for their second win in a row albeit also just their second win in seven games.
On the bright side, rookie phenom Eric Paschall is available to play tonight after being in and out of action over the last four games. Alen Smailagic was also called up from the team’s G-League affiliate, the Santa Cruz Warriors, but will be out for tonight’s game — perhaps we’ll actually see him in a regular season game sometime soon????
Paschall (right knee) will play tonight and is not even listed on the official NBA injury report submitted by the Warriors at 230p EST.
— Let’s Go Warriors (@LetsGoWarriors) December 24, 2019
Ky Bowman is also listed as “available”, being called up from Santa Cruz..
Warriors also announced they called up Smailagic but he’s “out” (?) pic.twitter.com/q4qbXqz7nT
On the other hand, this team is still ... struggling.
To put Warriors struggles in perspective — and to honor the ghosts of GSoM contributors past — I dug back through the archives and found the GameThread that GSoM OG Fantasy Junkie wrote on this day in 2009. It seemed pretty fitting for the moment, a moment when the team is in last place with a 6-24 record 30 games into the season and on pace to win under 20 games at the moment.
I’ll pass it back to Fantasy Junkie:
You remember 1999 right? Final record: 19-63. Jamison, Hughes. At least there was the All-Star game to distract us for a bit. Booing Cohan at the game. Vince Carter, Tmac, Steve Francis. Best dunk contest I’ve ever seen. Seriously, 2009 is getting to be as ugly as 1999 and even include the same optimism in the young developing future we have/had.
So as we approach the end of one decade and end another, tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1999 ... or something.
Anyway...
Yeah... things are that rough. 1999 rough. If you’ve been around that long, you’ll recall that feeling of literally fantasizing about the day when the team might be eligible to make the playoffs again.
Of course, circumstances are different ... but there’s only so much the promise of Klay Thompson and Steph Curry returning can do to make this bearable. But here we are, all ready to hide from family responsibilities and take in another 48 minutes of developmental basketball.
Enjoy! And let us know your thoughts in the comments!