For Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, their sharpshooting superstar Stephen Curry will definitely be out during the first round of the playoffs. However, Curry is out to prove his coach wrong.
Curry is out with a Grade 2 left MCL Sprain. Per Chris Haynes of ESPN, Kerr said:
“There's no way he's playing in the first round,” Kerr said during his pregame media availability in advance of hosting the Utah Jazz. “There's no way. I mean, he'll be re-evaluated in three weeks. So, yeah, we have to be ready to play without him and see how he's coming along.”
Curry is set to be re-evaluated on April 14. However, as reported by Marc J. Spears of ESPN, Curry wants to be back sooner than expected:
It's still a wait-and-see game to find out whether or not Curry does come back in the first round. The Warriors are loaded with Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, and Draymond Green. Though the presence of Curry makes the Warriors a totally different team, the three alone have enough firepower to lift the Warriors past the first round.
Despite Curry's absence, Kerr remains positive that they can go on without him as this circumstance is strangely familiar to them:
“The good thing is we've been through this,” Kerr said. “We've went through it last year with KD … It wasn't exactly the same timeline, but it was a similar injury and similar circumstances where we had to play without one of our best players. And we felt that appropriate fear and turned it up and got it going — and then when KD came back, Finals MVP after missing six weeks. So, there's a lot of similarities here, and I think we should feel good about our ability to play through this stuff.”