De’Anthony Melton out for Tuesday’s game

The Warriors will hold their backup guard out of the first matchup with the Pelicans with back inflammation.

Back problems held De’Anthony Melton to only 38 games last season. Now the Golden State Warriors guard’s balky back will cause his first absence of the year with his new team.

Melton will join Steph Curry on the sidelines for Tuesday’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans at the Chase Center, a matchup they’ll repeat Wednesday night. Both guards left Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers during the fourth quarter, Curry with an ankle injury and Melton with a sore lower back.

The Warriors are calling the injury “right facet inflammation,” which means there’s a “facet joint” on one of Melton’s vertebrae. According to everyone’s favorite spinal information website, Physiopedia, facet joints are “situated between the pedicle and lamina of the same vertebra and form the articular pillars that act to provide structural stability to the vertebral column as a whole.” Each vertebra has a pair of facet joints and if you want to sound really smart, you can tell other fans that Melton injured his “zygapophyseal” or “apophyseal” joint.

So far, Melton has 6.3 points and 2.7 assists in 16.7 minutes per game for the Dubs. He’s taken 75% of his shots behind the three-point arc and his point differential for the season is +1. His absense and Curry’s presumably will mean more minutes for Brandin Pozdiemski and Buddy Hield, along with Moses Moody, but leaves the Warriors short on ballhandlers.

New Orleans is also missing their starting point guard, Dejounte Murray, which makes C.J. McCollum their starting point guard in the backcourt next to Herb Jones. The short-handed Pelicans got smoked by the Portland Trail Blazers Sunday, 125-103, in their second matchup in a row. Zion Williamson is also likely to remain on a minutes restriction for the Pelicans, especially ahead of a back-to-back.

Will Melton’s back continue to bother him this season? Perhaps, which is one reason the Warriors added Hield and Lindy Waters III ahead of the season. With all the talk of Steve Kerr playing a 12-man rotation to start the season, the early injuries seem like they’ve already shrunk that rotation to 10 players. It’s a great chance for Hield to get fired up for revenge games against the team that traded him away as a rookie.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if Melton sits for both games against New Orleans, as the Warriors get two days off before they begin a five-game road trip Saturday in Houston. But the team would also feel a lot better about their first extended road trip of the season if they could go into it with a winning record.

Nothing came up on the MRIs of Melton and Curry, but we may see Melton’s back trouble keep him out of back-to-backs for a while. For now, the dynamic duo of Curry and Melton that showed promise in the preseason will only be together in ice baths and the trainers tables.