Brandon Williams hurts hamstring, Warriors set MRI

The Warriors were cruising at Chase Center, and the only bad news of the night came early.

Nick Friedell

@NickFriedell

Warriors say Brandon Williams has a left hamstring injury and will not return tonight.

Williams came off the bench and scored 4 points on 2-of-3 shooting in roughly 2 minutes before the hamstring grabbed. That's an annoying turn for a guy who had been giving Golden State real minutes lately, with games of 17 and 11 points in his recent run. Worse, it's the same left leg that already had a quad contusion earlier this month. Two separate issues on 1 leg inside a couple of weeks is the kind of pattern that makes trainers nervous.

Golden State didn't waste time on the next step. A few minutes after ruling him out, the team said he would get imaging.

Nick Friedell

@NickFriedell

The Warriors also say that Williams is scheduled for an MRI on his hamstring.

For now he's being treated as day-to-day until the MRI says otherwise. Hamstrings are the worst kind of day-to-day, though. A mild strain can be a week. Anything more and you're talking about a chunk of the season, and rushing it back is how a 1-week problem turns into a 6-week one.

The silver lining is that the game itself was never in doubt. With the Warriors up 40, Steve Kerr could shut down his stars and save their legs for the road.

Nick Friedell

@NickFriedell

The Warriors are up 40. The best news for Kerr is that he can rest Steph and Draymond the rest of the way with a big five game trip coming up. The pair has only played 21 minutes a piece so far tonight. Warriors' trip starts in Houston on Wednesday.

That trip is where losing Williams would actually hurt. It's 5 games in a row away from home, starting Wednesday in Houston, and depth in the backcourt is how you survive a stretch like that. If the MRI comes back clean, he's probably back in a few days. If it doesn't, Kerr has to find those bench minutes somewhere else while the Warriors try to keep stacking wins on the road.