Programming note: Log on to the CSN Bay Area Facebook page Wednesday morning at 10 a.m when Warriors analyst Kelenna Azubuike joins "Warriors Outsiders" Drew Shiller and Grant Liffmann to bring you the latest on the Kevin Durant injury and the reported signing of Matt Barnes.
This year has been a full and not entirely pleasant chapter in the book of Matt Barnes. He was part of the daily dysfunction of the Sacramento Kings, he is apparently involved to some extent with an incident in New York, he was out of work and seemingly out of basketball . . .
. . . and now he is a Golden State Warrior again, all because Zaza Pachulia crashed into Kevin Durant Tuesday night.
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Durant hyperextended his knee barely a minute into a 112-108 defeat in Washington to the Wizards, and there is no good gauge on how long he will be out, though one would think it at least a week or two.
That injury forced the Warriors to drop their plans to sign veteran Jose Calderon and opt for Barnes instead. Barnes, whose career has already veered through Sacramento and Los Angeles twice, is now a two-time Warrior as well.
How meaningful this will turn out to be remains to be seen, though. The longer he plays, one presumes the longer Durant will be out, and the worse off the Warriors will be.
But it also will reveal general manager Bob Myers’ nimbleness in crisis, since the Warriors have not had to scramble in such a way since the renaissance began four years ago. Their four-game lead over San Antonio in the Western Conference may be imperiled, but unless Durant misses time into April or another one of the team’s prime contributors goes down as well (Shaun Livingston took a bit of a tweak himself Tuesday night), they should endure this brush with mortality and remain the favorite to reach the Finals from the Left Conference.
It is, however, a reminder that 2015, The Year of Years in franchise history, featured no such events. Everyone was hale, hearty and complete through that season, and there was barely a moment when they did not look like the impending champion.
Some called it luck, and it was. Luck is good, so it is not an insult.
But this is the more normal path to glory, where panic meets improvisation at a time of its own choosing, and the champion is the one who can react fastest and absorb the blow without showing signs that it did damage.
It’s just that you wouldn’t have figured Barnes, a material actor in the now-dead Warriors-Clippers feud of the early Teens, to return to Oakland . . . unless, of course, those feuds are really only rivalries of happenstance and convenience, forgotten (if not entirely forgiven) when circumstances allow.
These are those circumstances. Kevin Durant’s knee will explain just how dire those circumstances they might be, but Matt Barnes has landed nimbly – especially for someone who looked like the happy times were done.