DETROIT \u2013 One side may have been mired in a six-game road trip, and the home team was playing the second leg of a back-to-back, but both the Warriors and host Pistons played with an abundance of animosity early on at Little Caesars Arena on Friday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The officials whistled both coaches and a player for a technical foul before halftime in a game filled with grabbing and uncalled fouls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But after a contentious start, the game morphed into just another ho-hum Warriors loss, this time by a score of 115-101. The team\u2019s seventh loss in eight games also saw one of its top players leave early with a worrisome injury. <\/p>\n
The Warriors lost Kristaps Porzingis with a back injury as he came up hurt after fronting Paul Reed in the post in the second quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Porzingis immediately began to reach for his back, was subbed out and walked back to the locker room with team trainer Drew Yoder. The team diagnosed him with back soreness, and Porzingis did not return.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said that it was his back that started to tighten up,\u201d Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after the game.<\/p>\n
Porzingis has played in only seven of the Warriors\u2019 18 games since arriving in a trade from Atlanta.<\/p>\n
For the Warriors, Brandin Podziemski scored a team-high 15 points and both De\u2019Anthony Melton and Gary Payton II added 14. All-State center Jalen Duren scored 23 points for the Pistons, the East\u2019s top seed that forced a whopping 27 Warriors turnovers.<\/p>\n
The Warriors have usually spent the past few months wrangling with a depleted roster against healthier squads, Friday night saw them compete with a team on more even ground in terms of health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While Steph Curry (runner\u2019s knee) and a couple other Warriors starters in Al Horford (calf) and Moses Moody (wrist) were out, the Pistons had injury woes of their own.<\/p>\n
MVP candidate Cade Cunningham will miss multiple weeks after he was diagnosed with a collapsed lung earlier this week, and power forward Isaiah Stewart was out with a calf strain. Even Duren was dealing with a sore right ankle.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarly on, the turnovers were decision issues, and then as the game went on, it was their speed and athleticism,\u201d Kerr said of his team\u2019s troubles.<\/p>\n
The Warriors led 26-21 in the first quarter, it being very apparent that the Pistons missed Cunningham\u2019s presence at the point by committing seven early turnovers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Warriors led by as many as nine in the second, but the Pistons stormed back and took a 57-50 advantage into halftime. Detroit pulled away in the second half, facing minimal resistance at the rim while scoring 74 points in the paint. <\/p>\n
With Porzingis joining Horford and Quinten Post as unavailable big men, the Warriors\u2019 front line consisted of Draymond Green, 10-day contract center Omer Yurtseven and two-way contract Malevy Leons. That was until Leons also left the game with an apparent right wrist injury late in the fourth quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Warriors, still the 10th seed at 33-37, will finish their six-game road trip on Saturday in Atlanta. It will be Golden State\u2019s first game against former Warrior Jonathan Kuminga.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moody\u2019s wrist<\/p>\n
The Warriors could get one of their starters back soon. Moody has missed the past nine games with a right wrist injury, but has started shooting again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been progressing over these last few days, making big strides,\u201d Moody said at shootaround, noting that pain tolerance will be a factor in coming back.<\/p>\n
Moody said that he has still been able to do the same conditioning he usually would.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He is shooting 40.2% from 3-point territory this season in 59 games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Draymond\u2019s homecoming<\/p>\n
In his annual game in his home state of Michigan, Saginaw native Draymond Green scored no points with five rebounds and six assists against the Pistons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That kind of statline was not out of the ordinary for Green, aside from the scoreless aspect. In 21 games against Detroit, he has averaged 6.6 points, 6.4 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In front of a hometown crowd, Green left it all on the floor in more ways than one. He left a mess courtside after he dove into the fans early in the game, spilling a customer\u2019s beer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although not to be outdone, Payton II left candy strewn about when he crashed into the scorer\u2019s table a few minutes later.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Curry\u2019s jersey retired<\/p>\n
Steph Curry spent the team\u2019s travel day between Boston and Detroit making a quick trip back to his hometown of Charlotte.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Hornets raised his father, Dell\u2019s No. 30 jersey to the rafters on Thursday. Both Steph and his brother and teammate Seth Curry were there to congratulate their father in person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA special night for the Curry family,\u201d Curry posted on X. \u201cThe originator is in the rafters forever. Congratulations, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Currys remained in North Carolina on Friday, and will rejoin the Warriors in Atlanta on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 One side may have been mired in a six-game road trip, and the home team was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,160,296,188,3860,164,6,297,162,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-670247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-detroit","11":"tag-detroit-pistons","12":"tag-detroitpistons","13":"tag-golden-state-warriors","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-pistons","16":"tag-san-francisco","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116265678527692473","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}