Warriors center Porzingis misses 5th straight game with illness coach Steve Kerr calls "mysterious"

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Golden State center Kristaps Porzingis is still dealing with a medical issue that has sidelined him for a week and a half.

“It's a little mysterious,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said before his team hosted the Los Angeles Clipper on Monday night. “We're obviously working with him and hoping that he can get some clarity and he can kind of break through and get to a point to where he's consistently healthy. But that's something that the medical staff is working hard on with him.”

Porzingis had returned to practice Friday and was listed as questionable for Saturday's home loss to the Lakers, then missed his fifth straight game Monday with an illness. It's unclear if he will travel for the team's upcoming three-game road trip.

Kerr said he spoke with Porzingis earlier Monday.

“We had a good chat. He's doing fine,” Kerr said. “He's obviously wanting to be back and wanting answers and we'll keep supporting him.”

The 7-foot-2 big man from Latvia made his Warriors debut Feb. 19 against his former Boston Celtics team after being acquired in a trade from Atlanta, but hasn't played since. He has appeared in just 18 games overall this season, averaging 16.8 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.6 assists.

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Golden State Warriors center Kristaps Porziņģis (7) talks with Boston Celtics guard Derrick White (9) during the first half of an NBA basketball game in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Golden State Warriors center Kristaps Porziņģis, top middle, hugs Boston Celtics guard Payton Pritchard as Celtics guard Derrick White (9) hugs Warriors guard Gary Payton II after an NBA basketball game in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Golden State Warriors center Kristaps Porziņģis, top, smiles while wrestling for the ball with Boston Celtics guard Payton Pritchard (11) as referee Brandon Schwab watches during the second half of an NBA basketball game in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, left, shoots against Golden State Warriors center Kristaps Porziņģis during the second half of an NBA basketball game in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Golden State Warriors center Kristaps Porziņģis (7) gestures after making a 3-point basket during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Boston Celtics in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.

President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.

The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president's media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.

The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn't done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the U.S. against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a missile attack that killed nine people. The Israeli military has held multiple press briefings each day.

“The American people need a commander in chief, and he has been absent in that role,” Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said on CNN Monday. Emanuel, a Democrat, is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028.

Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”

That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”

The calls included one with Baker's colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump's mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.

Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico's Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn't hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.

“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”

The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”

In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News' Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN's Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.

Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”

Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth's briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth's rules restricting their work.

Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News' Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he's wrong?”

Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We're going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve."

Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth's former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speak during a press briefing at the Pentagon, Monday, March 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

President Donald Trump arrives for a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Monday, March 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)