TORONTO -- On one side of the Warriors' locker room Sunday night, Andre Iguodala was hobbling about like a 90-year-old World War II veteran.
On the other side, Klay Thompson was wincing and grunting and sighing and yelping to himself.
Both veterans were dressing carefully, slowly, one section at a time.
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Kevon Looney was somewhere back in the trainer’s room, being attended to for pain in his chest and collarbone that forced him out of the game.
Kevin Durant, wrapping up his 25th day on the sideline with his return to the court still indefinite, already had trickled out of a room filled with folks trying to summon joy amid misery.
Two games into the 2019 NBA Finals, that’s where the Warriors are. They had come back to tie the best-of-seven series with a 109-104 win over the Toronto Raptors on Sunday night, but the air around them was heavy with concern.
“I’m nervous,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr conceded to NBC Sports Bay Area after Game 2. “But we’ll see.”
Golden State Warriors
As good as the Raptors are -- and they are very good -- the Warriors’ biggest obstacle as they return to the Bay Area for Games 3 and 4 is their health. Their fifth consecutive run to The Finals, easily their most treacherous, is turning into a battle of attrition.
DeMarcus Cousins went down with a torn quadriceps muscle in the first round against the Clippers, and missed six weeks. He returned for Game 1 on Thursday, and played well in Game 2. Durant went down with a calf sprain in the next round against the Rockets, and hasn’t played since. Iguodala’s calf flared up in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals against the Trail Blazers, and after sitting out Game 4, he returned 10 days later for Game 1 of The Finals. He’s not healed, but he’s playing.
And now, in Game 2, Thompson and Looney added their names to that list. Both expressed a desire to play in Wednesday's Game 3, but their respective medical tests (MRI for Thompson’s left hamstring; MRI and CT for Looney) will determine whether they are able.
“We’re going to have to call some guys up from the G League the way things are going,” said veteran center Andrew Bogut, injecting a much-needed shot of humor.
Never before has the team’s motto -- “Strength in Numbers” -- been more challenged. The Warriors hung on to win Sunday at Scotiabank Arena, getting particularly helpful performances from reserves Shaun Livingston, Quinn Cook and Bogut, but this only will get tougher.
“We have been lucky,” Kerr said, reflecting on the four previous seasons. “It always comes down to health and us making shots. When you get to his level, both teams are so talented. Generally, both teams are great defensively. That’s the case in this series, though we didn’t show it in Game 1. We showed it tonight. We hit shots.
“But who’s healthy?”
Stephen Curry and Draymond Green, the fiber of the team, are relatively healthy -- though Curry needed some in-game fluids to overcome a case of mild dehydration. He scored 23 points but shot just 6 of 17 from the field. Green again was stellar, totaling 17 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists, leaving him a dime short of a fourth consecutive triple-double.
Green also led the charge, as he vowed, in limiting Pascal Siakam. The forward scored 32 points on 14-of-17 shooting in Toronto’s Game 1 victory, but he was held to 12 points on 5-of-18 shooting Sunday.
With so many ailing bodies, the Warriors were laboring in the fourth quarter but had just enough to finish the job.
“Coach always talks about it, that everybody's going to have a chance to help us win a championship at some point, and just to stick with it and be patient,” Curry said. “And it shows itself over the course of a season, and tonight was huge. We need three more wins, and we need it to keep going, but that's a part of who we are in our DNA. It's not just what we say.”
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When I asked Kerr if there was any better sense of whether Durant might return for Game 3 and, therefore, offset the probable loss of Thompson, the coach flashed a sad grin and shrugged.
“I have no idea,” he said. “That’s the hope. But it’s not a sense.”
That would be too ideal. Whatever the Warriors accomplish during The Finals will be done with the help of ice, ointments, tape and modern medical technology -- and maybe a change of luck.