Preview: Can Warriors survive a week (or more) without Curry?

Golden State's best player will miss at least the next three games

It’s a strange time to be a Warriors fan. The team feels both fragile and fearless - teetering between heartbreak and greatness. And now, with the playoffs underway, everything just got more complicated.

Life continues to be tough out there. The Golden State Warriors managed to secure a critical game one victory, but in doing so, they lost Stephen Curry for at least a week. As announced by the Warriors, the grade 1 (least severe) hamstring strain definitely rules out the league’s most electric shooter tonight, as well as the subsequent games at Chase Center.

Those are more problems than can be dealt with tonight. The focus coming into this game is to try and steal another win on the road. After storming out to a strong 3-1 lead early in the last round, the Warriors seemed to have let their foot off the gas a bit - narrowly escaping the series in seven games, eventually. Maybe some lessons were learned.

Whatever the case, this series just got a whole lot harder. The Warriors have long prided themselves on their roster flexibility and ability to roll out a number of different looks, but playing at least three games out of a potential total of seven with Curry is a steep, steep hill. Plus, hamstring injuries are notoriously risky to come back too early from. The Warriors aren’t going to risk Curry’s health, even if that means he’s got to miss more than a week.

But Golden State has climbed mountains. What’s a hill or two?

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GAME DETAILS

WHO: Golden State Warriors at Minnesota Timberwolves

Warriors lead series 1-0

WHEN: Thursday, May 8th, 2025; 5:30 pm PDT

WATCH: TNT

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Win it for Curry!

There’s plenty of numbers to analyze, but maybe it’s because of my brutal day in the cold-hearted, extremely selfish world of corporate America, or maybe it’s the visceral impact of the writing of Marcus Thompson - but this is all I want to write about: Curry cried in the locker room during game one.

There’s a ton of pressure riding on the entire franchise - but Curry, in particular - to get through as far as possible. Maybe another championship is possible. Why the heck not? We have all seen this core do crazier things. A tiny window is open though. The way these things work is that Golden State probably has an order of operations to their team goals. First up, make the playoffs, assess constantly, with the trade deadline as a natural point of no return.

Done. They made a final pivot to bring in Jimmy Butler, and fell just short of their final 6th seed target for the regular season. Then it just becomes “make it through the series” with an overarching objective of advancing as far as possible. This has been a tough run. This team is far from perfect. But with Curry leading the way, truly impossible things seem to happen regularly.

So the story coming out of that halftime locker room is extra heartbreaking.

Steve Kerr, in all his profundity, couldn’t say anything as he watched the superstar he’s coached for 11 seasons succumb to the suffocating disappointment. Kerr already knew, as tears fell from Steph Curry’s eyes, the heartbreak still fresh from the news that he sprained his left hamstring. Words weren’t what Curry needed. Or what Kerr had.

Superhuman personal performances aside, Curry also gets these occasional insane lifts from unexpected places.

Buddy Hield has played two of the best games of his career recently. Draymond Green had a strong case for MVP of that last game with his unexpectedly beefy 18-point, 8 rebound and 6 assists - including a couple of early buckets that set the tone. After trash talking Rudy Gobert relentlessly over the past few years, Green showed up in game one as the more dangerous player.

Remember that both of Green’s career scoring highs came in the playoffs. Plus, an increase in scoring pressure from him is exactly the sort of wrinkle this team could lean into right now. Just force the Timberwolves to worry about something else.

Green will show up. Looney, Payton, Hield, Podz, and of course Butler are all going to be hugely important tonight. Without Curry, the Warriors can’t afford to lose the little hustle battles, the boneheaded turnovers. They will need to tighten it up and play their most focused version of themselves that they can summon. Because it’s finally time to pay Curry back. To be there on one of the few occasions where Curry has truly been vulnerable. It’s not just the crying in the locker room that brings out the care.

It’s not just because of how good Curry is, there’s a special selflessness to his approach to running this team that inspires that Weaponized Joy ™ that defines the Warriors.

But so much rides on his shoulders. If something special is going to happen here again this postseason, Curry will need to be there. And now, because of the injury, maybe it all just went up in smoke. One pulled hamstring. Back to MT2:

So the Golden State Warriors head coach, in this halftime moment Tuesday in the visiting locker room of Target Center, didn’t even try finding the right words. He just hugged his point guard.

“That’s all I could do,” Kerr said after the Warriors won Game one, 99-88 of their second-round playoff series against the Minnesota Timberwolves. “I just feel so bad for him. Everything that he does. How much he cares.”

Curry was plus-10 in his 13 minutes - the Warriors were up by seven when he went down, just a few minutes into the second quarter. This is going to be a tough run.

But we have all seen crazier stuff. We Believe.

Butler was brought in for exactly this moment - a player who thrives when the stakes are highest, who knows how to win with scraps and swagger. Hield has already stepped up, and his confidence and goofy demeanor seem to be an oddly good fit with the more measured excellence of Butler . The question now isn’t whether they can rise to the moment - it’s whether they can do it together, three more times …without Curry, maybe.

Prediction

It’s time for Jimmy Butler to beat the Timberwolves with bench players again. All hands on deck, it’s strength in numbers time. Warriors stun the Wolves and come back home with a gimpy Curry but a bright outlook.