Warriors vs. Nuggets: With Livingston out, it’s Cook’s time to shine

The Warriors will face the Nuggets in Denver today at 5 p.m. PST without Shaun Livingston.

While it looks like the Golden State Warriors will have Andre Iguodala back when they face the Denver Nuggets today, they will be without the help of mid-range assassin Shaun Livingston, who is out with a left knee contusion, according to Warriors PR.

With Livingston out, it's quite likely that Quinn Cook will be seeing some additional time today.

Cook has averaged eight minutes per game during the Warriors’ first two games and figures to fill a large part of the 16.5 minutes per game that Livingston has been playing — it’s unlikely that Warriors coach Steve Kerr would significantly extend starter Stephen Curry’s playing time or do something really wild like play Jacob Evans, who has yet to appear in a regular season game, at point guard. Another option is to give Iguodala some minutes as the primary ball handler after his return from a calf injury that kept him out of Friday’s game.

However, like many of the Warriors’ young returners, Cook has gotten off to a rough start this season, as described after their win against the Utah Jazz by Dieter Kurtenbach of the San Jose Mercury News.

Kerr benched Quinn Cook for the second half of Friday’s game. It was justified — Cook’s defense has always been suspect and the Jazz attacked him early and often. Cook had a ghastly defensive rating of 183 Friday — even if it was a small sample size, that’s unplayable.

Nevertheless, with this being the front end of a back to back set and the Warriors trying to manage regular season minutes as part of their bigger goal to repeat as champions, it seems like they’ll just end up letting cook figure things out on the floor.