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Two-time NBA MVP point guard Stephen Curry only played four games during the 2019-20 season before going down with a fractured hand. Curry, 30, is set to return to the hardwood for the Golden State Warriors on Sunday, March 1 against the Washington Wizards.
While many have cast doubts into letting Curry play out the rest of the season for Golden State, it's absolutely the right move for the veteran point guard.
Roster compatibility
There was already anxious energy heading into the current season for the Warriors prior to Curry's three-plus-month trip sidelined due to All-Star shooting guard Klay Thompson suffering an ACL tear in the decisive Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals against the champion Toronto Raptors plus Kevin Durant's departure to the Brooklyn Nets in the summer.
Curry needs to be in the lineup for the final 21 games to see how he meshes with the rest of the roster. Thompson will not make an appearance at all this season and there are a few young players that need to be evaluated before the Warriors make big decisions in the next offseason.
That means playing alongside rookie power forward Eric Paschall and other players like Ky Bowman and Damion Lee (whose Curry's brother-in-law), two guards the Warriors are high on.
New lottery odds
Both the New Orleans Pelicans and Memphis Grizzlies jumped up six spots in the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery, taking future All-Stars Zion Williamson and Ja Morant, respectively.
The Warriors are the worst team in the league at the moment with a healthy margin; Steph Curry coming back for the last 20 games should not dramatically change that gap, and if it does, the new lottery odds instituted initially last year flatten out the first overall pick to the worst three teams instead of the single worst one having the best (14.0 percent for three instead of 25.0 percent for one).
The Warriors should not be concerned with their impending top-five draft pick in the 2020 class being altered by Curry returning. There are more important results at stake.
Additionally, there's no telling what the Warriors could do with their 2020 first-round pick. It's already been hypothesized that the Bay Area franchise could dangle that pick to another team in order to acquire another star and retool in the next offseason, so that prospect (many theorize ex-Memphis Tigers center James Wiseman, perhaps) could be landing with another organization instead of the Warriors to begin with.
There's no reason the Warriors aren't going to be bad for the last 20 games, but that doesn't mean Curry can't thrill fans with his on-court virtuoso performances and Golden State can see how he does with several key players while the team ultimately loses many more games than they win in the final stretch.
