The Golden State Warriors beat the New Orleans Pelicans 138-87 at Chase Center on Monday night, their eighth straight win and their sixth victory to close a perfect home stand, improving to 8-3. The game was marred by a first-quarter injury to guard Brandon Williams, who left with a left hamstring issue and did not return.
Williams played just two minutes before exiting and was ruled out for the rest of the game. The Warriors said afterward that he will undergo an MRI on Tuesday.
Williams had been managing a left quadriceps contusion earlier in November before the hamstring issue surfaced in the same leg.
The injury adds to an already thin rotation. Jimmy Butler remains out recovering from right ACL surgery, Moses Moody is out following left patellar tendon surgery, and Kristaps Porziņģis is away from the team.
Will Richard, sidelined with a torn UCL in his left thumb, said before the game that he wants to play through the injury but won’t know if he can until the swelling goes down. If Williams and Richard are both unavailable Wednesday against the Houston Rockets, the Warriors will be down to 10 healthy players on standard contracts — 13 healthy bodies in all, counting the two-ways.
Stephen Curry scored 25 points in 21 minutes and Brandin Podziemski added 25 while finishing a game-high plus-36. New Orleans, playing the second half of a back-to-back, was missing Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy III and Yves Missi.
The Blowouts Have Hidden How Thin This Roster Already Was
Golden State’s run of lopsided wins has come while three rotation pieces were already unavailable, which has masked the attrition rather than offset it. A hamstring injury in the same leg as a recent quad contusion, stacked onto Richard’s thumb, pushes the standard-contract count toward single digits.
That is the real pressure on the front office. Golden State may have to make a corresponding roster move — a call-up or a trade — simply to field enough bodies, not because anything about the team’s performance demands one.
Tuesday’s MRI Decides Whether This Is Attrition or a Roster Problem
The MRI will set the severity and the timeline for Williams’ hamstring. Wednesday against the Rockets is when the roster math becomes real: either Williams and Richard are available, or Golden State is forced into a move it has spent the win streak avoiding.
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