Wednesday started with Steph Curry defending his wife on Instagram and ended with him holding his side in pain in a Toyota Center tunnel.
That’s a lot of plot for one day, even for a guy whose life already plays like a docuseries. Ayesha Curry’s five-second kiss with co-star Matthew Daddario in Roku’s Second Chance Holiday had turned into a social media and podcast storm, with Gilbert Arenas reportedly calling her a “blemish” on the family. Steph called out Arenas and other commentators Nick Young and Emmanuel Acho by name and effectively told them to pipe down.
All three apologized, but tensions had clearly heightened around the Curry name. Meanwhile, back at work on the basketball court in Houston he’s poured champagne on repeatedly, calamity struck Steph.
Early in the first quarter Steph came off a screen and hit a three. He grimaced on the release, waved to the bench and walked to the locker room in obvious pain. He was done with 6:25 left in the first quarter and by Thursday morning the MRI showed an oblique abdominal tear. The Warriors say he’ll miss at least two weeks and be re-evaluated then. Steve Kerr said there was “a high level of concern,” and Steph told him it was a pain he had never felt before.
The Warriors lost 115-108, which ended an eight-game win streak. Former Warrior legend Kevin Durant led the Rockets with 20 points in what was a balanced attack for Houston (six different players scored in double figures). He used to be the Golden State’s answer to Steph coming off the floor; now he was the one punishing them for it.
If you’ve followed this team for more than a few years, sometimes Rockets games feel like an episode of Rescue 911 with the way that Golden State keeps inexplicably suffering random weird injuries.
In Game 4 of the 2015 West finals in Houston, Steph went up as Trevor Ariza pump-faked, flipped over his shoulder and hit his head on the floor. He went through concussion protocol and came back in the third quarter.
Two nights later, back at Oracle for the closeout game, Ariza’s knee caught Klay Thompson in the side of the head. Klay needed stitches in his ear and was diagnosed with a concussion with the NBA Finals a week away. I remember them getting called the ”Crash Brothers” that week, as Dub Nation held a collective frustrated breath.
In the 2016 first round, after winning 73 games and putting the entire league in a stranglehold, Steph hurt his ankle in Game 1 at home. Then in Game 4 in Houston he went down again with a sprained MCL in his right knee in arguably the most viscerally disturbing fall he’s taken as a Warrior. Ask anyone in the Bay how that June went and watch their face.
In 2018, Steph narrowly avoided being turned into a crash test dummy when he and Ariza collided in the audience over a loose ball. This Ariza guy just was a magnet for harrowing moments of physical contact with the Splash Bros, eh?
Then came 2019. In the second round of the playoffs on a hot night in Houston, the leg of a Finals MVP was compromised. That’s right, I’m talking about Andre Iguodala.
But I wish that was the worst of it. At Oracle, two-time Finals MVP Durant pulled up over Iman Shumpert late in the third quarter of Game 5 of the West semis, landed, and walked off with a right calf strain. After that he only played a little over one more quarter as a Warrior before embarking on a journey of self exploration around the NBA.
It keeps going: in 2021 in Houston, Steph fell into the metal stairs by the Rockets bench and left with a tailbone contusion.
Last November at Chase Center, he tried to take a charge on Amen Thompson, got run over and left with a quad injury.
This current injury to Steph has the cruelest timing of the bunch. I’d be curious to hear what you think about the footage on it in the comments (#foulplay).
A roster held together with tape had finally found a rhythm and won eight straight with half the rotation in street clothes, while the Rockets employ the one guy the Warriors desperately wanted to keep to ensure the team was bulletproof even when Steph wasn’t available.
Was KD the best insurance policy ever written? In retrospect the Durant years still look so ridiculous. KD was a superstar and also the ultimate safety net. If Steph went down, the Warriors still had one of the three or four best players on the planet. Even when KD was the one who got hurt in 2019, the setup worked the other way too, and the Warriors closed out the Rockets without him.
This version of the team already lost their insurance policy when Jimmy Butler’s knee buckled last season. Not to mention the absences of their supposed center Kristaps Porzingis and a former lottery pick in the rotation Moses Moody. Additionally Gary Payton II’s knee is inflamed and Brandon Williams has a strained hamstring. Will Richard was suiting up with a torn thumb UCL.
They kept stacking wins anyway, because a 38-year-old guard in his 18th season was putting up 27.8 a night on 50 percent shooting and nearly 46 percent from three. In his absence the team faltered despite a gritty effort.
Watching KD lead his team to victory last night made me wistfully remember how he exemplified Dub Nation’s rallying cry of “don’t waste Steph’s prime.” It was pretty good seeing Big Yax play so competitively against the Slim Reaper, even earning Durant’s praise after the hotly contested game.
Yaxel scored 25 points with 10 rebounds. Brandin Podziemski, the other leader of the Warriors MASH brigade, added 22 of his own. Those two will have to be their best selves for Golden State to escape this Steph and Jimmy-less stretch of basketball with wins.
The next formal update for Mr. Curry comes in about two weeks, and a re-evaluation is just a checkup… not a return date. Nobody’s going to rush a 38-year-old’s core. This is happening as a five-game road trip starts, with the injured list trying to get longer than the active one. It’d be interesting to see how Kerr juggles this and how De’Anthony Melton gets a lion’s share of the minutes in Steph’s absence.
I know that right now the Warriors need health, not another Kevin Durant (and they’re not getting one anyway). They also better exhibit the kind of disciplined, tenacious, and intelligent basketball that adds up to a path of their own. Because that’s a path they better get more and more familiar with, as not only do they have to continue without Steph at least half a month; there’s also the not-so-distant future when he’s fully gone.
Steph Curry’s story has always been a blockbuster. Now the Warriors are getting an unexpected holiday preview of the sequel without him.