Brandon Rush is one of the last holdovers from a different era of Warriors basketball. He put up some great shooting numbers for them in the 2011-12 season, and damn, hold on a minute, I’m looking at his teammates that year and it is MESSED UP.
Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are there as the only other two from that season who are still with the team. Monta Ellis wasn’t having it all until he got traded mid-way through the season. Apparently Mikki Moore was still in the league at that point? And Kwame Brown? I remember Charles Jenkins being fat that year, I think. Ekpe Udoh was already busting it up, and Dorell Wright was a year removed from teaching Curry how to be the three-chuckingest player in the league.
Who is Keith Benson?
Never mind. Yeah, a lot has changed since then. Curry is a god, Thompson is a minor deity, Rush got his leg exploded, and everyone else is gone. No big loss, since that 11-12 Golden State team wasn’t much good, but still a stark reminder of the amount of roster turnover the average team has.
Tonight, old days came to life again. Brandon Rush relived his non-injured youth, scoring 16 points by means of a not-very-reminiscent-of-his-youth dunk and a bunch of triples, a nice departure from his usual passiveness and brickiness. Him starting for the best team in the league is going to be one of the weirder aspects of this season, when we look back on it.