The Warriors couldn’t slow down De’Aaron Fox. A fractured finger might do it for them.
Fox, who is averaging 31.5 points in Sacramento’s first-round series with the Warriors, fractured the index finger on his shooting hand in Game 4. Now he’s doubtful for Game 5, and possibly the remainder of the series.
It’s not the first time the Warriors have seen an opponent’s star go down with an injury during a playoff series. Last year, Ja Morant suffered a bone bruise three games into Golden State’s series with the Memphis Grizzlies. In their first NBA Finals in 2015, Kyrie Irving hurt his knee in overtime of Game 1, and missed the rest of the series.
That’s not all. The Cavaliers were missing Kevin Love from a first-round injury in 2015. Chris Paul strained his hamstring late in Game 5 of the 2018 Western Conference Finals against the Warriors, who took the last two games with Paul out. Mike Conley played the Warriors in the 2015 second round with a broken face from a C.J. McCollum elbow in the previous round.
Kawhi Leonard also got hurt in the 2017 Western Conference Finals, the one injury of this bunch actually caused by a Warriors player, though it aggravated the ankle he’d sprained a few days earlier.
The injury luck caught up in a big way for the Warriors in the 2019 Finals, when Kevin Durant tore his Achilles tendon and Klay Thompson tore his ACL in consecutive games.
It’s possible Fox goes ahead and plays anyway with his fractured finger. But if he can’t go, it could be another boost to a Warriors’ playoff run, at the expensive of one of their opponent’s bodies.
