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October 14, 2026
The roster

Porzingis is out indefinitely, and Bassey started when Green and Horford sat

The club set no timeline for practice, a week before the opener at the Lakers. The center minutes belong to Draymond Green, Al Horford and Charles Bassey, and on Tuesday in Las Vegas Bassey had them to himself.

CE
Cam EllisOct 14, 20264 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Kristaps Porzingis in a studio headshot, wearing the Warriors' white home jersey with blue trim, against a plain white background.

The Warriors said Wednesday that Kristaps Porzingis will remain out indefinitely, a week before the season opens at the Lakers, and that he will spend that time around the team.

"Porzingis will remain out indefinitely due to the same health-related matter but will be around the team," the club's statement read. It said he returned to the practice facility on Tuesday and met with general manager Mike Dunleavy and Dr. Rick Celebrini, the vice president of player health and performance, and that "the specific contents of that meeting will remain private." An update on "the potential resumption of practice, playing status or timeline" will come "when available and appropriate," the club said.

He is not cleared to practice, Anthony Slater of ESPN reported. Porzingis wrote on X that he is "working with doctors and experts to figure out how to be fully back to good health," as quoted by ESPN, and added, "Honestly, I'm getting better and better. I just have to stay patient, and I believe I'll be feeling great again soon."

The club and the player have said nothing beyond that. The statement sets no date for practice and none for a game, so the rotation Kerr is building for October 21 is a rotation without him.

The plan already assumed it#

Kerr's leaning starting five, Stephen Curry, Brandin Podziemski, Gui Santos, Yaxel Lendeborg and Draymond Green, is the smaller lineup ESPN described as the one he favors in Porzingis' absence. Al Horford comes off the bench in that plan, at about 20 minutes a night. What Wednesday changes is how long the plan runs. At media day on September 28, Dunleavy declined to rule Porzingis out for the opener, NBA.com reported. The statement gives no date at all.

Porzingis played 15 games for Golden State after the February trade that brought him from Atlanta, 11 of them as a starter, by NBA.com's count. Without him, the center minutes fall on Green, who is 36, Horford, who is 40, and Bassey, with Graham Ike behind them.

Tuesday, without Green or Horford#

Bassey had the job to himself in Las Vegas on Tuesday. ESPN's injury report listed Green and Horford as resting, and Kerr started Bassey at center beside the other four from his leaning five.

Tuesday at the Lakers, Las VegasMinutesPointsReboundsBlocksPlus-minus
Charles Bassey278123+11
Graham Ike12630+7

From ESPN's box score of Golden State's 101-89 win.

Bassey played 8:09 in Saturday's game against Sacramento, all of it at the end. Tuesday he played more than three times that, started, and led the team in rebounds. Ike, the two-way center who did not play Saturday, was back in the rotation.

One preseason game against a Lakers team without Luka Doncic settles nothing about October. It does show the order Kerr reached for with both veterans out. Bassey started and played the most minutes of any Warrior, and Ike came in behind him.

The first week#

Portland visits Chase Center on Friday for the last preseason game. The opener is at the Lakers on October 21. Memphis comes to Chase Center on October 23, and Golden State plays at Phoenix the next night, the first back-to-back of the season, inside the first four days of it.

The contract, as far as it bears on the roster#

Golden State re-signed Porzingis this summer to a two-year, $40 million deal, ESPN reported, structured so the club could trade him at any point and limit its long-term exposure, with only $3 million of the $20 million due next season guaranteed. That structure bears on next summer. It does not change the opening week, in which he is on the roster and out indefinitely, and the center minutes are Green's, Horford's and Bassey's.

Sources: Golden State Warriors, "Warriors Statement on Kristaps Porzingis," warriors.com, October 14, 2026, for the statement's text, the Tuesday meeting and the missed camp and preseason games; Anthony Slater, ESPN, October 14, 2026, for Porzingis's X post as quoted, his practice status, the contract terms and their structure, and Kerr's leaning lineup in Porzingis's absence; ESPN's box score and injury report for Golden State at the Lakers, October 13, 2026, in Las Vegas; NBA.com, September 28, 2026, for Porzingis's Golden State games and starts last season and Dunleavy at media day; NBA.com box score and substitution log for October 10, 2026, against Sacramento; Dalton Johnson, NBC Sports Bay Area, October 12, 2026, for Kerr on Horford's minutes and the starting five; ESPN's Warriors schedule for the preseason and regular-season dates; ESPN's athlete pages for the ages.

Filed under Warriors

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This is the behavioural half of my own argument and it is the part that can be wrong. The legal analysis is not a prediction: while the Warriors sit at $216,439,590 in apron allocations, the mid-level, the bi-annual and the Jackson-Davis trade exception are all barred, and that follows from published rules rather than from my judgment. What is a judgment is that the club leaves it that way. NOTE REWRITTEN 2026-08-10 by Cam Ellis, claim and resolve_by unchanged: the original note named the routes out as Moses Moody's $12,500,000 or two of Al Horford, Yaxel Lendeborg, De'Anthony Melton and Brandin Podziemski, and that list was built off a roster read that omitted Kristaps Porzingis. Porzingis is on this roster at $20,000,000, his contract is inside the $216,439,590, and he is trade-eligible through the offseason because his June 30 extension does not exceed the extend-and-trade limits, so he is the largest movable route under the apron rather than an absent one. The list was also missing the calendar: Bassey, Draymond Green, Horford, Melton and Payton II cannot be traded until December 15, which is five of the thirteen standard contracts and two of the four mid-sized salaries the original note leaned on. So the call is now made against a wider set of legal routes than I first counted, which makes it a harder call rather than an easier one. I am still calling that Golden State does not pay a rotation player to unlock an exception that would immediately hard-cap it at the line it just crossed under. Scoreable against any published opening-night cap sheet on the apron basis, which is the basis that includes likely incentives. If they get under, I am wrong, and the whole piece was describing a temporary condition rather than the season's shape.

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