SAN FRANCISCO– Stephen Curry is back. And he looks like his old self. After Curry missed the last 27 games due to lingering right knee issues, the Golden State Warriors' superstar returned to the lineup and finished with 29 points on 5-of-10 from deep.
And while the Warriors ultimately fell 117-116 to the Houston Rockets and Alperen Sengun's game-winning layup, they walk out of this game with renewed hope thanks to Curry's flashy fireworks.
“You can just feel it, we're back in the mix,” Kerr said of everything Curry brought back with him in his return. “We're back in the fight with Steph.”
It took a while for Curry to find that fight as he fought through some rust when he came in off the bench for only the seventh time in his career in the regular season. But once Curry found his groove and footing, he looked like his old self.
“First run was tough. Second run was great,” Curry explained post-game. “It's not as much rust as it's the endurance. Kind of picking and choosing a little bit of your spots to maintain. It's not like you're going 100 miles per hour the whole time. I'm just feeling it out. But after I traveled and got my shot blocked, the first two possessions, I kind of settled in.”
Settling in for No. 30 looked like a classic Curry flurry, to the delight of the crowd and his team. Curry put up 17 second-half points to bring the Warriors back from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit, including a 32-foot bomb to cut the Rockets' lead to one with less than a minute remaining.
“You can just hear it. You can hear it with the crowd,” Kerr said. “And there's a different energy in the building, and there's a different confidence with our team. He just infuses the whole team with confidence.”
Managing Stephen Curry's minutes moving forward
Now that the Warriors have finally gotten Curry back on the floor, the trick will be to keep him there. With the nebulous nature of the patellofemoral pain syndrome and bone bruising that hampered his right knee, this will be an injury Curry will have to manage for the foreseeable future.
Curry described the state of his knee as the “new normal,” meaning, at the very least, he'll have to do a lot to maintain the health of his knee, lest it become the problem that sidelined him for two months.
In the coming days and weeks, the Warriors' medical staff will monitor how Curry's knee responds to stress and fatigue.
That could mean restricting his minutes for the time being. And possibly holding him out of one end of a back-to-back. Whatever it means, the Warriors will exercise caution, as they also balance trying to ramp his minutes up for the inevitable Play-In Tournament.
“I'd say, I got to be smart and do the right things for the right reasons,” Curry said in response to a question about how quickly he wants to ramp up his minutes.
“I'm sure next game will look very similar to this one. You kind of continue to assess how you feel moving forward in getting the right decision. So I'm looking forward to Tuesday. [It will] probably be the same kind of flow and rhythm. And hopefully it's more of the same, and then we kind of take it from there.”
Kerr expects the team to start increasing Curry's minutes game-by-game. He won't be coming off the bench for much longer, Kerr confirmed. Regardless, the Warriors have their star back. And with him, their mojo and their groove.
“There's just a momentum and a confidence,” Kerr emphasized, with Curry back. “He's Steph Curry for a reason.”
