Warriors coach Steve Kerr said before Saturday’s game against the Phoenix Suns that forward Andre Iguodala would miss two weeks because of a sprained ankle. Iguodala injured the ankle during Friday’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers, when Damian Lillard and Iguodala got caught up going for a loose ball.
According to my co-host John Dickinson, Kerr said during pregame availability that the injury to Iguodala was “a really big deal,” because of how much Iguodala impacts the game on both ends of the floor.
Earlier today, on the “NBA This Week,” we talked extensively about Iguodala and how important he is to the Warriors.
You can listen to to the “NBA This Week” here.
During the course of our conversation, we talked about how Iguodala has gotten more and more important to the Warriors the longer he’s around. If you’ll remember, it wasn’t all good with Iguodala from the get-go.
He was just OK in his first year with the Warriors, then had to figure out how to come off of the bench. It took him a little while to get used to it, but he’s settled in very nicely.
Gradually, Iguodala has almost turned his sixth-man role into a science, figuring out perfectly what the Warriors need each and every night to win and then going out and doing that. Iguodala is going to give you defense every night, a chance, shall we say, against the opposition’s best offensive small forward. But he’s also going to give you passing, stability, basketball IQ and a bunch of other stuff. Sometimes even scoring.
For example, it was no coincidence that the Warriors committed 20 turnovers in their loss to the Lakers on Sunday, then followed it up with 24 turnovers in a sloppy win against Orlando — both with Iguodala sidelined with a still recovering hamstring issue.
If the two-week prognosis holds, Iguodala will certainly miss the March 19 game at San Antonio and the March 23 game against the LA Clippers at Oracle. In short, Iguodala’s injury probably won’t impact the Warriors’ chances to repeat, but it might hurt them in their quest for 73 wins.
LINK TO “THE NBA THIS WEEK.”
Matt Steinmetz 
May hurt chase to 73, but will strengthen depth as clark, rush, Barbosa will get extended minutes and Dubs in general will have to learn to play w additional line ups…. so a silver lining in regards to championship
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Will hurt a lot! ( see Kerr s comments) draymond and Bogut play d, but iggy plays elite d for the 2nd unit and runs the team with the starters out. Be interesting if Kerr can get the Warriors back to championship d of last year. Now it’s time to see how good a coach Steve really is, forget the win losses, we now will be gearing up for the playoffs….go Warriors!
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