It took about five minutes for Steph Curry and the Warriors to decide playing tonight wasn’t worth the risk.
The Warriors have officially ruled Steph Curry out of tonight’s Game 2
— Marc Stein (@ESPNSteinLine) April 19, 2016
Here’s how things went, chronologically:
No decision yet on Stephen Curry.
“We will definitely eye on the side of causation,” coach Steve Kerr said.— Scott Howard-Cooper (@SHowardCooper) April 19, 2016
Stephen Curry just left floor shaking in his head in disappointment after cutting his pre-game workout short. Doesn’t look good for Game 2.
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpearsESPN) April 19, 2016
Doesn’t look like Curry is going to be playing. Left the court in a huff
— Marcus Thompson (@ThompsonScribe) April 19, 2016
I shot some video of the early part of his warmup, which ended up being the end of his warmup.
Steph Curry made six in a row from the corner, but he left the floor less than a minute later. pic.twitter.com/a0Ca7MQ7nx
— Bay Area Sports Guy (@BASportsGuy) April 19, 2016
He made several corner threes in a row, then walked to the top of the key, caught a pass, pivoted to his right while moving forward. That was it. He hopped a few times on both feet in apparent frustration, walked to the free throw line and flung a one-handed shot. Then he left the court.
What’s scary about this isn’t that he’ll probably miss at least one game of this series, but that we don’t know what’s wrong. Here’s some more from Kerr (transcribed by Tim Kawakami):
We had a good conversation today before shoot-around and Steph is a very rational person. He’s easy to speak with. We kind of went over the different scenarios.
He understands we have, first of all, his best interests at heart in his career. We know he had surgery on that ankle four years ago.
So he’s got a lot of basketball ahead of him.
There’s plenty of cases in the past where people played through stuff and it didn’t turn out so well. Grant Hill being the one that always jumps out at me.
Whether that’s the same type of thing as this I don’t really know, but I do know we have to look after his health because the competitor that he is, he’s going to want to play.
Grant Hill? Yikes. That’s not the path Curry or the Warriors were hoping his career would follow. Perhaps this is just a tweak that will get better with a little rest. But the way he got hurt (non-contact) and his inability to make quick movements forward (at least, that’s what I’m seeing on my video) make the situation seem rather ominous. The Warriors can probably survive a series without Curry against Houston, but that obviously wouldn’t be the case in future series.
