While the Golden State Warriors' recent seven-game win streak has gone a long way toward easing many of the concerns around this team, the reality remains that they'll need as much help as they can get as they await the returns of Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody.
They've gotten that so far. After a rough stretch to start the season, Georges Niang has settled into his role off the bench, providing both consistent perimeter shooting and constant intensity to the rotation. Brandon Williams has been excellent as well in his role, and the emergence of Yaxel Lendeborg as a true secondary offensive option couldn't have played out better than it has.
It looked, for a bit, as though former second-round pick Will Richard could be grouped among those emergent pieces as well.
His production looked largely the same through 10 games—he averaged just 5.1 points, 1.8 rebounds, and one assists while shooting 47.5% from the field—but he was starting to look more confident on both sides of the ball, working his way into backdoor cuts and providing more frequent high-level point of attack defense when called upon. In a season where it looked like he might struggle to claim rotational minutes, that was a major development.
But now Richard has gone down with a torn UCL in his left thumb and is out indefinitely. It couldn't have come at worse time for the second-year guard.
Will Richard's hopes for a true rotational role may be erased by the time he returns to the court
The Warriors haven't confirmed many details about Richard's injury yet. But even if we're looking at it conservatively, it looks like he'll be out for the foreseeable future—Keegan Murray missed 15 games with a relatively mild version of the injury near the start of last season.
If Richard was going to carve out a rotational role with Golden State this season, he was going to need to provide both consistent 3-point shooting and a complete understanding of where and when he could make his mark in the flow of the Warriors' offense.
Not only was he shooting 42.9% from 3-point range prior to his injury, but his ability to read off of Stephen Curry and Draymond Green's two-man actions and find a way to get to the basket was highly encouraging. His 10-point performance against the Miami Heat was the best example of this.
But if Richard is now sidelined for even a month, coming back at the start or middle of December, he'll need to earn that trust all over again. Santos is dealing with tendinitis in his knee, and the absence of those minutes opened up some opportunities for Richard which will be erased as soon as tonight's game against the New Orleans Pelicans.
If the recovery takes longer than that, though, we're running up against the currently projected return dates for Moody and Butler, which obviously will shift the balance of the rotation as a whole. Santos will likely be moved to the bench, and there will be much steeper competition on the wings once Moody gets back to full strength.
Richard has still performed excellently for a player that was taken with the 56th overall pick in the draft. But this injury has only made his bid for playing time infinitely tougher, depending on the length of his rehab.
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