It’s been awhile since our last NBA Tuesday miniseries entry, even though we checked in on the Golden State Warriors right before their December 25 TV appearance. Now the franchise is in trouble, because it was unable to follow our blueprint presented here a long time ago: not giving excessive minutes to aging stars during the regular season. With a season-ending injury to one of its older players, GSW is screwed.

In his age-36 season, small forward Jimmy Butler was averaging over 31 minutes per game, and last night Father Time came calling in the worst way: he tore an ACL and is now out for the season. Currently, Butler is the Golden State leader in Win Shares per 48 Minutes Played (WS/48), even better than age-37 superstar guard Stephen Curry. Now without its most valuable player, the Warriors truly will be forced to scramble.

Should they even try?

Well, sure. With a 25-19 record right now, Golden State sits in the eighth spot among Western Conference teams, but their sabermetric realities put them sixth overall—with a big gap between the seventh team and the eighth squad. However, staying in that spot becomes trickier when you lose your most-valuable player, sabermetrically. It really is time for a major roster shakeup now, in truth, while the team still can pull it off.

To wit, both Draymond Green and Jonathan Kuminga are overvalued players by almost everyone, and the Warriors should package them both for some better assets. We don’t know who those players are, but Green and Kuminga are playing terribly this season—buried at the bottom of the WS/48 rankings for this roster. Many “experts” foolishly think these two guys are “good” … whatever that means. But they’re not.

Not even close.

Compared to Butler (.249 WS/48) and Curry (.170), Green (.052) and Kuminga (.008) are a joke. There are a lot of players on this roster who are performing better than these bottom two, despite not getting anywhere near as many minutes on the court: Trayce Jackson-Davis (.168), Will Richard (.125), Brandin Podziemski (.119), Gary Payton II (.118), and Quentin Post (.095) are all going to have to step it up now.

Guys like Moses Moody (.094) and Gui Santos (.089)—in addition to age-39 center Al Horford (.105), as much as he can, safely—also can move into more prominent roles. It’s easy to see how the team can compensate for Butler’s loss here by eliminating Green and especially Kuminga from the rotation and selling high on their perceived value. Whoever the Warriors get in return can be a huge positive boost …

If, and only if, the team starts managing its personnel more effectively than it has been for the last few years. TJD is tragically underused, of course, and Richard has been a great rookie revelation. Building off that, the Golden State front office can help the team get younger and better by dumping Green and Kuminga on some clueless team—like they did with Jordan Poole to the Washington Wizards. Time is now.