Largely due to the injuries that have been plaguing the 31-year-old shooting guard, who suffered a painful calf problem in mid-November.

The Golden State Warriors bєat the skilled, energetic, and very tall Orlando Magic team 121–115 on Tuesday night, which was a big win that they badly needed. We got the win, but it cost us: guard Gary Payton II hurt his left hamstring in the third quarter and had to limp to the locker room. He was later ruled out for the rest of the game.

As expected, the bad news kept coming the next day. A story from Shams Charania says that Payton will miss “several weeks” because of how bad the strain is.

Payton was only in his second game back after missing 13 games with a strained right leg. This is a terrible blσw to him. Plus, the Warriors lost badly. They are still trying to figure out how to improve their defense, and they don’t have Payton or Draymond Green because they are still serving their indefinite ban.

Payton has been hurt a lot since he was an important part of the Warriors team that won the NBA Finals in 2021–22. He got a three-year, $26.1 million deal with the Portland Trail Blazers because of that performance, but he could only play in 15 games with them because of a stomach ιnjury before the trade deadline, when he was sent back to the Warriors. After the move, he wasn’t able to play for about six weeks. Then, he came back and played the last seven games of the regular season and the playoffs.

When the year began, GPII looked fully healthy. Since then, however, things have gone badly. He missed a game in early November because he was sick, and in the middle of the month he hurt his foot and couldn’t play in three games. Then he hurt his leg in a loss to the Sacramento Kings on November 28. That kept him out until Saturday.

He is now back on the bench and, based on how he acted on Tuesday, he has every right to be angry.

We hope he gets better soon and, even more, stays better. It’s important that GPII gets it because the team needs it.