The Golden State Warriors, for better or worse, were still going for it.
They had an aging core of Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green, and they were trying to surround them with enough talent to make one more run at a championship.
That all changed Monday night when Butler tore his ACL.
The Warriors will be without Butler the rest of the season, and potentially not even have him fully healthy to start next season.
Even as things stood, the Warriors were only in a play-in spot in the Western Conference standings.
Now? The future has come into new focus, and it's bleak.
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What's next for Warriors?
The reality is that Golden State will continue to do what it can to put a competitive team on the floor as long as Curry is around.
He's a legend, and they owe Curry that, even at 37 years old.
But the days of competing for championships have like fully passed by now that Butler is out for the foreseeable future.
It means the Warriors need to consider whatever they do with a Jonathan Kuminga trade being about the future and not the present.
It means they need to at least contemplate whether moving Draymond Green is the better move for their future, too.
They won't win a championship this season unless Curry goes on the greatest hot streak in NBA history. It's not to say they should look five years down the road. But they can't view this veteran core as the answer anymore.
There have been other injury checkpoints during the Warriors' epic run in the last decade-plus. This might be the injury that serves as the ending of their real title chances once and for all.
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