Whiteside out against champion Warriors. And Curry throws alley oops to Parkland students
Heat center Hassan Whiteside is missing Wednesday’s game against Golden State because of a hip pointer, coach Erik Spoelstra said Wednesday evening.
Whiteside sutained the injury late in Monday’s loss to Phoenix.
James Johnson, meanwhile, will miss his third consecutive game with a shoulder injury.
But Justise Winslow is available to play against the Warriors after missing two games with knee soreness. So are Derrick Jones Jr. and Rodney McGruder, who also were sidelined for Monday’s game against Phoenix due to injury.
WARRIORS AND STONEMAN DOUGLAS
The Golden State Warriors’ morning practice at AmericanAirlines Arena on Wednesday was punctuated by star Steph Curry throwing alley-oops to a student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland.
That scene, and others like it on Wednesday, were the byproduct of Golden State coach Steve Kerr inviting students from both the Parkland school and Miami Northwestern to the team’s shootaround before its game Wednesday night against the Heat.
“It’s special having them here,” Curry said, more than a year after a gunman opening fire at Stoneman Douglas last February, killing 17 students and staff members and injuring 17 others.
“They’ve done so much in the wake of the shooting --- speak out, using their platform they have, the entire student body,” Curry said. “Come and just have fun, enjoy themselves. I know that means a lot.”
Stoneman Douglas student Matt Fisher, who was getting the alley-oops from Curry, said: “This is just a surreal opportunity that I really appreciate.”
Fisher accompanied three other Stoneman Douglas students and Jeff Foster, a government teacher and former basketball coach at the school.
“You hate you have these opportunities because of what happened at our school, but at the same time, it’s nice to have these contacts and meet people,” Foster said. “Coach Kerr has been at a few… events with our kids. He’s very political….
“It helps because they’re kids. I’m happy to see them smile again. This month was especially hard because it’s the anniversary again. Look, they’re running around getting alley oops from Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodola. They’re having fun. You replace bad memories with good memories. That’s the hope with this.”
Kerr, after practice, again made the case for gun reform:
“You try to put yourself in their shoes,” Kerr said. “Can’t imagine, at any age, but to have to go through that at 14, 15, 16 years old ... to imagine somebody walking in right now and start spraying us with a semi-automatic weapon it’s horrifying. They had to go through that. So we have to decide as a country if we want to do anything about that. The answer is pretty simple, in my mind: ‘Yes, we want to do something about it.’
“The fortunate thing is the young people leading this drive are going to be much more impactful than old people like me. It’s true. Older people have been trying to do something but they haven’t made the impact. But the next generation, the country belongs to them. So I’m really proud of what they’re doing. They’re starting this grassroots organization. They’re starting chapters all over the country.
“And they’re trying to do something that we all should be doing, just to protect each other. It doesn’t mean getting rid of the Second Amendment. It means getting semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people, it means having background checks, it means really investigating (if) we need to sell high-capacity magazines to people. Is that really necessary? Does that fall under the Second Amendment? These are all really difficult questions but one thing I know that is our citizens’ safety should be priority No. 1, and the young people are going to win.”
WADE APPRECIATION
Kerr, on the tributes for Dwyane Wade around the league this season: “Watching it on TV, I enjoyed seeing it at Oracle. The video tributes, the jersey exchange, the applause from the fans. It all shows you what Dwyane has meant to this league. When you see all the younger players in this league, how much they revere him, you realize and you remember.
“You go back to 06 and he was Finals MVP as a young player. A lot of guys in the league were like 10 years old watching that, so they idolized him. But he’s one of the modern day stars who a lot of the current players idolized, mimicked, watched.”
Asked about navigating Wade’s minutes, Kerr said: “He’s still really good. You just play to win. You try to win every game, so that means Dwyane is going to play a lot of minutes. In some ways, it might be easier because you don’t have to rest him and think about next year and load management doesn’t necessarily have to come into play. You can say let’s go; we have only a couple months left. Seeing how well he’s playing - and how well he played against us a couple weeks ago - it doesn’t seem like it would be too much.”
Curry called Wade “an all-time great in terms of being a champion, carving out his own lane. He’s obviously done amazing things in this league. This year, celebrating him everywhere he goes is beyond well deserved.”
### Kerr said all of his players would be available for the Heat game except center DeMarcus Cousins, who is being listed as out for “load management” and continued recovery from last year’s Achilles injury that sidelined him until earlier this month. The Warriors are 11-1 with Cousins, Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green all playing.
This story was originally published February 27, 2019 at 1:19 PM.
