Warriors lose four more players to injury as slide continues

SAN FRANCISCO — The freefalling Golden State Warriors lost four more players to injury Friday night and also lost a fourth consecutive game, 127-117 to the Minnesota Timberwolves, to continue their tumble down the Western Conference standings.

Veteran forward Draymond Green was scratched 30 minutes before tipoff because of lower back soreness. Veteran center Al Horford left after five minutes with right calf tightness. Veteran guard Seth Curry limped to the locker room in the second quarter with left adductor soreness. And second-year center Quinten Post sprained his left ankle.

“We’re going through it,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “We’re about as beaten up as any team I can ever remember.”

The Warriors have been missing their two best players for more than a month. Jimmy Butler tore an ACL in early January and is out for the season. Stephen Curry has been sidelined since Jan. 30 because of a persistent right knee issue.

Stephen Curry missed his 16th consecutive game Friday night, and the Warriors have gone 5-11 in that stretch to fall to 32-34, two games behind the LA Clippers (winners of four straight) for the eighth seed in the Western Conference. They are 8½ games out of the sixth seed.

Green’s back issue doesn’t appear to be serious. He was spotted in the locker room after Friday’s game and appeared to be moving around fine. There was no official word on the severity of the injuries to Post’s ankle or Seth Curry’s adductor. Kerr called Horford’s calf injury a “strain” and indicated an expectation that he would miss time.

“With a calf, we’re not going to rush him back,” Kerr said.

This latest wave of injuries comes at an inopportune time for the Warriors. They begin a six-game road trip Sunday night in New York against the 43-25 Knicks and will also make stops in Boston, Detroit and Atlanta, putting them at serious risk of falling below the Portland Trail Blazers (32-35) into the 10th seed.

Recently acquired center Kristaps Porzingis was a minor bright spot for the Warriors. In his fourth game with the franchise, he upped his workload to 22 minutes and scored 20 points, saying afterward he is making progress with his recent health issues.

But the Warriors were severely outmanned without half of their rotation, falling down by 25 points and never getting closer than nine during a faint second-half comeback.

The NCAA’s May 27 withdrawal deadline came and went with few surprises, as college prospects made their final decisions on whether to enter the 2026 NBA draft.

In the 10-day decision period that followed the end of the combine, 14 NBA prospects on my top 100 chose to go back to school, adding to a large wave of players opting to try again in 2027, the vast majority of whom will be well-compensated by D-I programs next season.

NBA teams expected this trend all season because of the way NIL has impacted the draft process. Nearly every player who wasn’t viewed by teams as a consensus first-round pick decided to return to college, adding to an earlier wave of prospects who opted not to test the waters at all. These players will all look ahead to what NBA teams view as a very flat 2027 draft class, one that presently lacks obvious high-end, star-level prospects and leaves plenty of room for returners to stabilize or improve their standing a year from now.

Although the very top of the board remains largely unchanged, with our top 25 prospects all remaining in the draft, there’s plenty of movement all over the top 100, based on new information coming out of the draft combine and other factors as we enter June.

The NBA’s draft withdrawal date is June 13, a final deadline that primarily applies to international prospects.

Here are ESPN’s updated rankings for the 2026 draft class, including the latest intel for the top 25 prospects. This process is informed by my own player evaluation and intel from around the NBA and college ranks, and it offers a representation of the available player pool and insight into executives’ and scouts’ views.

Dybantsa has more than made his case as a No. 1 pick candidate over the past six months, with strong combine measurements reaffirming his excellent physical traits for a scoring wing. Whether he hears his name called by Washington at No. 1 or lands with Utah at No. 2 (a scenario that would likely thrill both parties), he’ll enter the NBA as a potential franchise-level talent thanks to the strides he has made as an all-around offensive player.

There are still several key areas for improvement for Dybantsa in the long term, particularly his 3-point shooting, ballhandling and level of defensive engagement. Although he’s not a two-way player yet, wings with his caliber of tools and competitive makeup tend to become positive defenders over time. It helps that those weaknesses are all actionable areas for development for whichever team drafts him.

It’s worth emphasizing that Dybantsa has never been the true consensus No. 1 pick in this class, with Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer also garnering strong support around the league, and Caleb Wilson also considered to be in that tier by some. But NBA executives have widely come to view him as the safest choice of that group.