DENVER -- Brandon Rush isn't supposed to be here.
And by here, I mean sitting on a courtside seat getting ice taped to his legs after a workout with the defending champion and then 37-2 Warriors, a team for which he not only only capably started during Harrison Barnes' extended absence, but continues to play meaningful, effective minutes.
Rush is not supposed to be thriving, shooting 47 percent from 3-point range and getting legitimate minutes for a team this dominant. He's supposed to have been an anecdote, a footnote, another in a line of incredibly talented Rush brothers who were never able to make the most of their talents.
Rush has suffered two torn ACLs, one in each knee. Those are injuries that have spelled doom for many a player throughout the league's history. Having functional knees, it turns out, is important for playing basketball. He tore his right knee during an illegal workout for the New York Knicks while Rush was playing for the University of Kansas. He tore his left ACL in 2012 in just the second game of the season, when he appeared primed for a real opportunity to break out in his first go-round with Golden State.
Instead, he came back from that injury as a shell of himself and was eventually traded to Utah in the deal to clear cap space for Andre Iguodala the following summer, only to re-sign with the Warriors in 2014. He played 271 minutes all of last season for the Warriors during their title run. Two hundred and seventy-one, across just 33 games.
He's played 532 minutes in 31 games already this season.
In short: Brandon Rush the basketball player is not dead. Far from it, actually.
What's interesting is that Rush doesn't sound like the ordeal was particularly difficult, or even worrisome. In fact, he sounds like the entire time he dealt with a painful injury, the grueling rehab, and the slog to get back into a position to contribute to a team, he was pretty certain things were going to work out.
"I come from a strong-willed family," Rush told CBS Sports this week. "My goal was to never give up. I learned from these injuries [about] sticking with it. I had to keep positive and keep my head straight.
"I knew at some point everything's going to turn back around. I've got my family praying for me. I've got my fiancee praying for me. I knew things were going to start going my way. To have that kind of support around me is very helpful."
At age 30, things have definitely started to go Rush's way. For as much as people love to talk about how the Warriors get all the breaks, health or otherwise, this is a team that has made its own breaks. Rush was driven to the edge of his career's relevance. Shaun Livingston fought back from one of the most traumatic knee injuries in the history of the league. Andrew Bogut did pretty much the same thing after his gruesome elbow injury. Leandro Barbosa was supposed to finished years ago. Hardly anyone had even heard of Festus Ezeli coming out of college. Draymond Green was a second-round pick. Even Stephen Curry, until the last few years, was doubted in one way or another at pretty much every point of his career.
Up and down the roster, Golden State, as the odds-on favorite to win a second straight NBA title, is filled with guys who have battled through adversity to get where they are, and Rush is just another example. But this is about more than being happy for a guy who has resurrected his career. Rush is a real weapon. He's long and athletic and versatile. He's another like-sized wing who fits perfectly inside the Warriors' ever-switching defensive system. And as mentioned, he's become a dead-eye shooter from distance -- as if Golden State needs another one of those.
"It's easy to make open shots when you get them with this team, with the kind of playmakers we have," said Rush, who is in the 81st percentile with a 59 percent effective field goal percentage, according to Synergy Sports.
It's true. It's a lot easier to shoot when you're wide open because defenses are caught up chasing Curry and Klay Thompson around, and Rush is right to credit that fact. But he's doing more than just standing in the corner. Recently he's started creating more off the bounce, using his shot as a threat, and he really knows how to navigate a screen -- which remains one of the more overlooked skills of a shooter.
With the Warriors, while everyone focuses on Curry's warp-your-brain dribbling exhibitions, or the way the ball moves, or their ability to hit any shot from anywhere at any time, one of the things that gets lost is their sublime screen schemes. On-ball, off-ball, no team clears space for their shooters the way the Warriors do. They adjust angles to combat particular tendencies or matchups, and their guards know how to peel off their defenders by taking the right route. (Their bigs are also nearly universally hammered by opposing fans for setting illegal screens: this is true for nearly every great offensive team in the league, but it is at least worth mentioning.)
Here, watch the way that Thompson and Curry use their own gravity to keep Omri Casspi occupied, before Bogut slides subtly into the mix with a body bump, as Rush sprints uninhibited to the outside.
As outlined here from ESPN.com's Sherwood Strauss, the Warriors have even used Rush in their hilariously beautiful "Elevator Doors" play:
Rush is expanding more and more in the Warriors' system. Coach Luke Walton said one of the big adjustments this year has been that Rush feels confident enough to do the things he's capable of doing. Once again, the Warriors empower players to use their strengths.
"He's got his confidence back," Walton said. "His shooting has been unbelievable, but he's playing defense, he's making plays. He's rebounding the ball and pushing it, where last season he didn't have the confidence to do that."
Rush says the injury robbed him of that confidence, but now he's moving past those mental blocks.
"I used to do that before the injury. I used to grab the rebound and try to make a play. Now I know the team has that confidence in me, and it allows me to do that [again]."
The Warriors always praise their teammates, as any successful team does. And their "swagger" -- or whatever you want to call that element they possess that makes it nearly impossible to take your eyes off them -- is as infectious as anything. Rush has clearly fed off that. He's playing with confidence, which any good shooter has to play with to be truly effective. The Warriors as a whole are uber-confident, obviously. They take shots you wouldn't shoot in a Horse game at critical moments without any hesitation.
What's interesting is that a team full of confident shooters, and players of all kind, has zero ego conflicts to speak of. They play for one another, and that trickles down to a guy like Rush when the best players on the team are also the biggest supporters.
"I love being around this group of guys," Rush said. "Everybody's positive, and there's no type of egos on this team. We bring it on the floor and we hang out outside of the game.
"Honestly, it's the coaching staff (that prevents ego issues). The coaches are always in our heads about being together, staying together, win or lose, nobody try and do better than the other person. It's a different type of group."
You can say that again.
The Warriors continue to roll through the league and have a real shot at breaking the 1995-96 Bulls' record of 72 wins, and Rush has had a lot to do with it of late. That's why he's strapping on the ice after a workout. He's logging real minutes and there are surely a lot more to come, whether he keeps his starting spot or not. The guy who wasn't supposed to be here appears to be here to stay. This is what happens when a talented player stays patient but keeps pushing, and it doesn't hurt when he plays for a team that over and over again figures out a way to get the most out of every player on the roster.
What the Warriors are doing with guys nobody ever thought would be capable of anything like this, well, it all should be incredible. Unbelievable. Stunning.
But for Brandon Rush, it was always going to happen. He was sure of it.
