There are roughly four weeks and exactly 17 games remaining in the Warriors’ 2017-18 regular season, and we do not know when, during that stretch, Stephen Curry will return to the Golden State lineup.
The Warriors’ star guard was injured early in the first quarter of the Warriors’ game against the Spurs at Oracle Arena Thursday, rolling his ankle after a drive to the hoop.
Curry stayed in the game, made two free throws, and then exited the contest for good.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr said that Curry asked to return to Thursday’s game, but he was held out by the training staff. He has been ruled out of the Warriors’ game against the Blazers on Friday night in Portland as well as Sunday’s game in Minnesota.
The earliest possible return for Curry is Wednesday. when the Warriors play the Lakers in Oakland, but there’s currently no timetable set for his return.
Without Curry, the Warriors were able to beat the Spurs 110-107, but it was a grind-it-out affair that required heroics from both Kevin Durant (15 fourth-quarter points) and Draymond Green (incredible fourth-quarter defense, particularly in the final four minutes).
And while both remaining Warriors players are exceptional, there was nothing we saw Thursday that indicated that the Warriors’ formula for victory was replicable on a nightly basis.
So while the Warriors won their seventh consecutive game Thursday, there was no post-game celebration.
Here’s what we learned from a win that, let’s be honest, felt like a loss:
Stephen Curry is the straw that stirs the drink
That will be the formula again with Curry out of the lineup, but losing the two-time MVP just moments into Thursday’s game highlighted how narrow the margins are for the Warriors without No. 30 on the court.
Without Curry on the court this season, the Warriors have a net rating of 3, per NBAWowy. With him on the court, that number is 14 (which is massive).
Obviously, the Warriors are better with Curry on the court, but forget the numbers — you only needed to watch Golden State slog through Thursday’s game to understand exactly how much better.
The offense looked constipated — overly reliant on Durant one-on-ones, Green shooting wide-open jumpers that the Spurs were happy to give him (he was 1-for-7 from behind the arc), and ornate offensive sets to get open shots.
The Warriors missed Curry’s ability to carve up defenses with penetration, his finishing at the rim, and his 3-point shot — but more than all of that, they missed the spacing his presence naturally creates.
It cannot be exaggerated how influential a player who can pull up and make it from 40 feet is to an offense. To steal a term from Kerr, Curry creates chaos — there’s no one in the league who pulls and prods defenses like him, and Curry’s teammates benefit immensely from the defensive attention their point guard demands by having plenty of space to operate.
The Warriors’ bench-led units have struggled to create consistent offense all season, and only Nick Young is capable of knocking down a couple of 3-pointers (and Young is anything but consistent). The Warriors’ first unit, without Curry, found themselves facing same problems.
If not for Durant and Green’s fourth-quarter heroics, the Warriors would have justly lost Thursday’s game.
And without Curry in the lineup for at least the next two games, the remaining Warriors are going to have to turn their defensive intensity up a few notches — and not just in late-game scenarios — and Durant will need to continue to be close-to-impeccable.
If either of those things fails to come to fruition, the Warriors stand a good chance of dropping games.
The Rockets will have to hand the Warriors’ the West’s No. 1 seed
When the Spurs took a 101-93 lead over the Warriors with 4:44 left in the fourth quarter, Thursday, I tweeted a question:
Is it too early to congratulate the Rockets on that No. 1 seed?
— Dieter Kurtenbach (@dkurtenbach) March 9, 2018
It turns out, that, yes, it was too early for us to do that — Durant and Green had something special in store for the Spurs — but the question can still be applied outside of the context of Thursday’s game.
The Rockets have won 17-straight games, and while I highly doubt that they win their final 18 contests, setting a new NBA consecutive wins record in the process, it is hard to see Houston dropping more than a handful of games down the stretch. They’re playing out of their gourds right now.
And without Curry, it’s much easier to imagine the Warriors dropping a few contests over the final four weeks.
So with the Rockets holding a half-game lead for the No. 1 seed, the question has to be asked: Can the Warriors finish with a better record than the Rockets over the final month?
The Curry injury, the injuries to Andre Iguodala and David West, as well as the Warriors’ general apathy (or concession) of having home-court advantage, I know where my bet would be placed.
The way I see it, Houston will have to hit into a serious road-bump — an injury to a star of their own or a losing streak of some sort — for the Warriors to overtake the Rockets for the No. 1 seed.
Such circumstances are not impossible — not by a longshot — but this Curry injury has ceded control to Houston in the race for home-court advantage and there’s little reason at the moment to think the Rockets will relent it.
Kevin Durant was signed for games like Thursday’s
It’s a responsibility that Durant is more than capable of handling, as he proved earlier this season when Curry missed 11 games with an ankle injury, but it’s a significant task nonetheless.
At least that’s what can be surmised from Thursday’s game.
But this is why the Warriors got Durant — not only because Harrison Barnes bricked laid his way out of town (and Durant was a much more attractive player for the money that offseason, obviously), but because Golden State needed insurance for if Curry went down.
[Remember, Curry’s injury in the playoff series against the Rockets in 2016 loomed large in the Western Conference Finals and the NBA Finals (unless you believe Kevin Love is truly capable of locking up Curry on the perimeter…)]
Durant was worth his premiums on Thursday, for sure. Durant’s All-NBA-caliber defense — which had been lost in recent weeks — showed up once Curry exited the game. (Isn’t that funny?) And late in the fourth, with the Warriors needing to chip away at a San Antonio lead, Golden State merely handed over control of the offense to Durant, who knocked down 5-of-6 shots in the quarter.
And of his 15 fourth-quarter points, 14 of them were scored consecutively for the Warriors.
Kevin Durant’s career shooting percentage from that spot on the left-wing fringe: roughly 1000 percent.
— Dieter Kurtenbach (@dkurtenbach) March 9, 2018
The Easy Money Sniper had 37 points on 53 percent shooting overall.
The late-game, Durant-led offense was simple — if it can really be called an offense: Green set a high pick for KD or gave the ball to him on the block, and Durant put up an unblockable shot.
Hey — no reason to overthink things. But if one of those shots Durant hit in the final four-plus minutes doesn’t fall, the Warriors probably lose Thursday’s game.
Such were the margins of the contest.
It worked out for one night, in large part because San Antonio was out-of-sorts on switches and pick-and-roll defense all game — but other teams aren’t going to be as flummoxed by the simple, yet-potent offense.
That’s not to say that Durant can’t win games nearly by himself without Curry in the lineup — it’s only to say that it’s a lot to put on his shoulders and that he, as incredible as he is, might not always come through with a performance like Thursday’s.
It’ll be fascinating to see how often the Warriors cede complete control of the offense to Durant without Curry in the lineup. This is what they signed him for, but the hope, of course, is that they don’t have to overuse him ahead of the postseason.
That’s a tough balancing act — Kerr is going to earn his checks over the next few games.
Draymond Green is entering playoff mode
The Spurs were held to one made field goal in the final four-plus minutes of Thursday’s game — creating a window for Durant to pull the Warriors back into the contest — because Green so willed it.
I wish I could explain it better than that, but that’s the best I have.
Green, playing center with a modified version of the Hampton’s Five (with Nick Young and Shaun Livingston — so it was more like the Jones’ Island Five) was everywhere in the final four minutes of the game, though it was LaMarcus Aldridge’s inexplicable fadeaway jumper against a mismatched Young and Bryn Forbes’ missed open 3-pointer at the buzzer that proved the difference in the contest.
“That’s just what he does. He seems to be at his best when things go wrong for us and we have to have that fight. He’s one of the most competitive people I’ve ever been around and when he gets going like that defensively and is all over the floor, blocking shots, getting steals and yelling – that’s when we are at our best,” Kerr said.
The Warriors switched up their coverage on Aldridge in the fourth quarter, opting to have Green shadow him instead of a failing stream of double-teams, making Green was the primary defender on LMA for the final four minutes Thursday.
It should come as no surprise that Aldridge was held without a field goal during that stretch.
“I think when Coach switched our coverage up on Aldridge, they were getting a lot of layups off the double team. Once they switched it up, Draymond followed them every time, made them shoot a tough shot, made them pass the ball out for a pick-and-roll,” Durant said. “With five or six seconds left on the shot clock, sometimes and he was trying to get into his move and he was able to close the paint up. He did a lot for us on that end, because they were going to Aldridge every time.”
Paired with his defensive performance in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s win over the Nets, you can start to see a pattern developing: Green is rounding into playoff mode when it comes to defense, which is where he can impact the game just as much (if not more) than on the offensive end.
Green registered a triple-double Thursday, but it was nothing to celebrate — he was 1-for-7 from behind the arc, arguably his worst shooting night of the season. But the Warriors are 22-0 when Green goes for double-digits in three categories. No matter how he got to the number, you can’t argue with the results.
Kudos
• To JaVale McGee, who was outstanding in 17 minutes, scoring 13 points and blocking four shots. The Warriors are 11-0 with him as a starter this year and 18-2 with him in the starting lineup over the last two years. I don’t think this starting thing is a fad — which is good, because we can all get behind seeing more of this:
• To Klay Thompson, who showed off his playmaking ability with six assists Thursday. The Warriors will need more of that without Curry in the lineup. Time for dribble-drive Klay?
Yeah, about that
• Nick Young might have gotten the critical defensive “stop” of Thursday’s game, but he was lost at sea for most of the game. Yikes.
Let’s just say I have concerns about Nick Young’s defense: pic.twitter.com/ejoMGjwfW6
— Dieter Kurtenbach (@dkurtenbach) March 9, 2018
• You’re up, Quinn Cook. Go get yourself a contract.
The Very Best Video
Come for the best 10 seconds of Omri Casspi’s Warriors’ career. Stay for Young’s reaction.
Omri Casspi with the block and the… slam?
Ok then pic.twitter.com/twyyuHVs7b
— Dieter Kurtenbach (@dkurtenbach) March 9, 2018
Read Again https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/09/warriors-vs-san-antonio-spurs-stephen-curty-injury-highlight-video-news-report-golden-state-kevin-durant-highlight-schedule-record-standings/Celebrate your friends’ successes like Nick Young celebrated Omri Casspi’s dunk: pic.twitter.com/A1AYsJLj7P
— Dieter Kurtenbach (@dkurtenbach) March 9, 2018
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