This season hasn’t exactly gone the way Golden State Warriors fans hoped it would… The Jimmy Butler injury, the Jonathan Kuminga saga, which ended at this year’s trade deadline, and the Kristaps Porzingis illness have left the Dubs in a wobbly situation. All of this, however, pales in comparison to what’s going on with Steph Curry.
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Butler, the 2025 trade deadline’s prize acquisition, went down mid-January this year with a torn ACL. It ended his season and possibly most or all of next season as well. Steve Kerr and Jonathan Kuminga were never able to stay on the same page, and their standoff was mercifully ended when the Warriors shipped him to Atlanta a few weeks ago.
Golden State hasn’t exactly looked like the winners of that trade, though. Kuminga has been tearing it up in his first few games with the Hawks, while Porzingis has only played 17 minutes with the Dubs and is now back on the shelf with an illness. Meanwhile, Curry has missed the past nine games with a knee injury.
Steph has long been the heartbeat of the Warriors, and without him, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the team has little chance to contend. After the team declared on Sunday that Curry would be reevaluated in 10 days, it’s clear that he’s not all that close to coming back yet.
On The Hoop Collective, Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps, however, agreed that this isn’t necessarily a death blow to the Warriors’ chances.
“Look, they’re gonna make the decisions based on Steph’s knee, I’m not saying they’re making decisions on trying to get the 7- or the 8-seed in the West,” Windhorst said. “But one thing that has made it a little easier on the Warriors is that the teams behind them are losing.”
Golden State’s position in the standings has been the same even though they’ve gone 4-5 without Steph. They’re currently eighth in the West, three 3 games behind the Suns but 2.5 ahead of the Clippers, 3 ahead of the Blazers, and 7.5 ahead of the almost surely lottery-bound Grizzlies.
“The Warriors are guaranteed, GUA-RAN-TEED, to quote our guy Charles Barkley, of being no lower than 10th no matter what they do the rest of the season,” Bontemps said.
“They’ve got maximum flexibility to try to coax Steph’s knee back as much as they can and get him ready to go for whatever the stretch run is going to look like, if they can get him out there at all,” he added.
It’s almost a blessing in disguise that the Warriors aren’t higher up in the standings, because then there might be pressure to stay there. Where they are now, there’s no hope of climbing into the top six, but also no worries about falling below 10th.
It would be nice to only have to win one play-in game to reach the playoffs. But the front office and coaching staff can rest easy knowing that they can use most of the regular season to get players like Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski ready for larger postseason roles.
Even if Steph comes back at full strength, those players will be vital to filling Butler’s missing production. And even though this hasn’t been the Warriors’ year, it isn’t over yet.
Steph, even at 37, is one of the few guys in the league who can put a team on his back. So if he can make it back and look like his old self, the rest of the league will need to pay attention.
