Porzingis Steps Away From Basketball as Health Battle Forces Warriors Star to Pause His Career

Kristaps Porzingis has decided to stop fighting his body and start listening to it.

The Golden State Warriors centre released a statement on Friday announcing that he is stepping away from basketball to focus on his ongoing health issues, bringing an abrupt and emotional pause to a season that never really started. He was careful with his words: this is not a retirement. But it is, for now, the end of his time on a basketball court, and nobody — not Porzingis, not the Warriors — is pretending otherwise.

"At this point, I've made the decision to prioritize my health and step away from the game I love," he wrote.

The statement landed at the end of a strange and unhappy few months. Porzingis signed a two-year, $40 million contract extension with the Warriors in late June, with the club expecting him to anchor the starting centre spot. He never got there. The autoimmune disorder postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome — POTS — which first flared late in the 2024-25 season while he was with the Boston Celtics, kept him away from training camp in Hawaii and off the court entirely this season. He has not played a single game for Golden State in 2026-27.

There were flickers of hope along the way. In mid-October he posted that he was working with doctors and experts and believed he would be feeling great again soon, and for a while it looked as though the worst might be behind him. It wasn't. As he tried to ramp up for camp, his body simply did not respond the way he hoped, and by Friday the 31-year-old had reached the conclusion he had been trying to avoid.

The basketball side of the story is messy, and it will not go away quietly. Earlier this week, NBA insider Jake Fischer reported that the Warriors had stopped paying Porzingis on his $20 million salary and considered his absence unexcused, and that the team was exploring ways to move him, either immediately or after December 15, when most players become trade-eligible. ClutchPoints reported on Friday that Golden State is in active discussions with teams about trading the contract, with the Milwaukee Bucks, Chicago Bulls and New Orleans Pelicans among those spoken to, and that a trade followed by a significant buyout is the expected path. The contract structure makes it workable: only $3 million of next season is guaranteed, so a team that takes him on could shed money quickly.

None of that changes what Friday was really about. Porzingis came to Golden State in a trade at last February's deadline and played 15 games, averaging 16.1 points, 5.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.1 blocks in 23.7 minutes a night — a reminder of the player he can still be when his body allows it. Across an 11-year career he has battled leg injuries and now this illness, which first took hold after a viral infection in Boston two seasons ago. The Warriors, remarkably, have won six straight after an 0-3 start and sit at 6-3 without him, but that only underlines the strangeness of it all: a team winning, and a player it paid to lead its frontcourt, stepping away to get well.

Porzingis remains eligible to be traded, and the Warriors will keep working with him, in his words, to "find a solution that makes sense." For now, though, the basketball can wait. He has spent long enough trying to play through something that would not be played through.