SAN FRANCISCO – Somehow, the Golden State Warriors' narrow 104-100 loss to the Houston Rockets was not the worst thing that happened to them on Wednesday night. Stephen Curry suffered a right quad contusion, the team reported, an injury he sustained around the 4:21 mark in the fourth quarter when he collided with Alperen Sengun on a screen the big man set.
Curry would try to play through the injury as he was visibly limping around, but would later go to the locker room just before the final horn sounded.
But while an injury to your star player is bad news, Curry's ailment certainly could have been worse. After the game, head coach Steve Kerr expressed some relief that Curry's quad contusion wasn't something more serious.
“When I heard it was a quad, I was actually kind of relieved,” Kerr said. “Better than an ankle or a knee. Hopefully, he can recover quickly and be okay, but we've got to hold down the fort.”
Whether Curry recovers quickly or not, it's too early to tell. The two-time MVP is scheduled for an MRI to make sure the initial injury diagnosis is accurate and to see if there is any other damage. Until then, Curry's availability for the foreseeable future is up in the air.
Curry missing time isn't new territory for Golden State. However, it doesn't exactly come at a time when the Warriors can afford an injury. Al Horford remains out with a sciatica nerve injury. Jonathan Kuminga is progressing, but is still a way off from getting back on the floor. And they also lost Gary Payton II to a right ankle sprain.
The Warriors, at this point in time, just don't feel capable of withstanding a Curry-less stretch. But they will have to. The only question is how?
Jimmy Butler's assessment of how the Warriors will survive
Naturally, with Curry potentially missing time, all eyes turn to his co-star Jimmy Butler, the self-professed “Robin” to Curry's “Batman.” Situations like these are precisely why the Warriors sacrificed Andrew Wiggins and traded for Butler. Even at 36 years old, Butler is a one-man system that Golden State can theoretically play through.
It might not look pretty, especially given how much smoother Butler plays when he shares the court. It might not be sustainable, given his age and the stage he's at in his career. But they gave him the two-year, $121 million to be their security blanket. Golden State will turn to him just like they did last season when Curry missed time. That means a much more deliberate style; more Butler in the post, controlling every possession, more Butler hunting his shot to make up for the ones Curry usually takes.
However, Butler made a point to emphasize that they shouldn't need to place everything on Curry's shoulders, hinting that they could use Curry's absence as an opportunity to fix their dependency on him. A reporter asked Butler what they would need to change if they have to play without Curry. The five-time All-NBA player didn't mince his words.
“We're going to have to be damn near perfect,” Butler said. “We aren't going to have the ultimate bailout on our team. Even when he's on the floor, we're going to have to do our job because we make the game difficult. As great of a basketball player as he is, he has a really hard job every single day if he's got to be the Batman of all Batmans and save us every night. That's not what he's here to do.”
The guys who need to step up
Turning to Butler is the obvious solution but Golden State also simply just needs to their role players to step up, especially offensively. The role players have been dreadfully out of rhythm from deep. The Warriors went 2-0f-21 from distance in the second half and while some of those misses came from Curry, Butler, and Draymond Green, it's not like the role players have been lighting it up as of late.
Sharpshooter Buddy Hield has struggled to find his shot. There were signs of hope he'd return to form after collecting 20 points on 4-of-8 from beyond the arc in the blowout win over Utah. But his zero points on three misses from the 3-point line seem to signal that those 20 points were an anomaly.
But Hield's not the only one; Brandin Podziemski's also had a rocky start to the season. His indecisiveness, a tendency that he seemed to have gotten over in the second half of last season, seems to have returned. And while his statsheet in the Rockets loss paints a somewhat positive picture, 14 points on 6/11 FGs and 2/3 3FGs, it leaves out some rough stretches for the third-year guard.
Chief among them was when he missed three straight free throws, one of which came courtesy of a Rockets lane violation, with the Warriors down 93-91. And on the following Rockets possession, Podziemski died on a pindown screen while guarding Sheppard, which allowed the Houston guard to bury a wide-open midrange jumper. To Podziemski's credit, he had stretches where he played well, when he wasn't doing too much and playing in the flow of the offense, which is something Kerr said he's talked to him about.
What the players believe they need to do
For Podziemski, he echoed Kerr's advice to him about not taking on too much by himself.
“Everybody just got to do just a little bit more,” Podziemski said. “Nothing too drastic. Everybody just plays a little bit better and collectively, and you hope that’s good enough to win.”
For Green, it starts with cleaning up the little things they weren't doing well when they did have Curry.
“We can't turn the ball over, can't give offensive rebounds, gotta start with that, 'cause you gotta give yourself some way to make up all of those points, so start there. Take care of little s**t you can take care of, and then figure everything else out from there.”
It's not rocket science in the sense that the Warriors know exactly what they need to do should Curry miss time. But it is kind of rocket science in the sense that even if they do know what needs to be done, can they actually do it? It's one thing to know it, it's another thing to execute it.
However that shakes out, the Warriors certainly breathed a sigh of relief when they heard it was only a contusion. But that feeling of dread that quite literally everyone associated with the Warriors felt when we didn't know exactly what kind of injury Curry had? That feeling should be an indicator of how everyone feels about the Warriors' chances of weathering the storm without their all-encompassing, gravitational supernova.
They know the formula. And in theory, they have the personnel. It's just about making it happen.
