Gui Santos Gets Real About Warriors' Injury Struggles After Loss

The Golden State Warriors just can't catch a break right now, and that goes for pretty much everything on and off the court.

Golden State fell to the Minnesota Timberwolves 127-117 on Friday night at Chase Center, dropping their fourth straight game and pushing their record to 32-34 on the season.

The loss was bad enough on its own, but the injuries that piled up during the game made it even worse.

After the game, Warriors forward Gui Santos was honest about what this team is dealing with as the losses and the injuries keep stacking up together.

"We just trying to play our best, you know, when we don't have a lot of guys or a bunch of guys are playing over it," Santos said. "It's still tough to keep the same rhythm, especially the way it happened."

Santos is right, and the way it happened against the Timberwolves (41-26) was rough.

Draymond Green was ruled out before the game with lower-back soreness, and then Al Horford left during the first quarter with a calf injury after playing just five minutes.

Seth Curry went down with adductor soreness after a collision with Donte DiVincenzo, and Quinten Post exited with a sprained left ankle in the fourth quarter.

That left Golden State with just nine healthy players for most of the second half, and it showed as Anthony Edwards torched the undermanned Warriors for 42 points while Rudy Gobert added 18.

Even though the result was ugly, there were still some positives to take away from the loss.

Santos finished with 17 points, three rebounds, and a career-high eight assists in 35 minutes, and he has been one of the few consistent bright spots during this rough stretch.

Over his last five starts, the third-year forward out of Brazil is averaging 17.0 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.6 assists while playing nearly 37 minutes per game.

Brandin Podziemski led the team with 25 points and 10 rebounds, continuing to shoulder a bigger load with so many guys out of the lineup.

The Warriors actually made a run in the second half and cut Minnesota's lead to just seven points in the fourth quarter after trailing by as many as 25, but they simply ran out of gas without the bodies to keep it going.

The bigger picture is what makes this so tough for Golden State and its fans.

The Warriors are 5-11 without Stephen Curry, who has been sidelined since late January with lingering knee issues and was confirmed to miss at least another 10 days as of earlier this week.

Jimmy Butler remains out after tearing his ACL, and Moses Moody is dealing with a wrist sprain.

Since sitting at six games above .500 back in January, the Warriors have dropped 15 of their last 22 games and fallen to ninth in the Western Conference.

With a brutal six-game road trip starting Sunday in New York and the injuries only getting worse, it is hard to see how this team turns things around anytime soon.

Head coach Steve Kerr summed it up best after the game when he said the Warriors are "about as beaten up as any team I can ever remember."

For Santos, Podziemski and the rest of the guys left standing, all they can do is keep fighting, even when the rhythm Santos talked about feels impossible to find.