SAN FRANCISCO — A blue bucket of ice and a hardly touched pink smoothie sat in front of Steph Curry’s locker. Team employees transferred his belongings to a back room, out of sight from reporters. The mood amongst the team was a mix of cautious optimism, nervous energy and veteran perspective.
Curry, the two-time MVP and face of the Warriors franchise, rolled his right ankle late in Thursday night’s 125-122 loss to the Chicago Bulls. He heavily limped off the court and headed straight to the locker room with 3:51 left. Not much was known right after the game, and the uncertainty will cloud over the team until he gets a firm diagnosis and timetable. As the Warriors (33-29) fight to escape the play-in round, the rest of the season will turn on the axis of the ligaments in Curry’s ankle.
“His spirits are high, we’ll see,” Draymond Green said postgame. “I think he may get an MRI.”
Curry rolled his right ankle on a drive in the game’s waning minutes, shortly after taking a key charge. He wasn’t available to the media postgame. Steve Kerr said he hadn’t yet talked to the training staff and only knew that Curry had his foot in a bucket of ice.
Still playing at an elite level in his 15th season, Curry remains as indispensable to the Warriors as ever. He has played in all but three games this season, earning his 10th All-Star selection while averaging 27.2 points per game. Two ankle surgeries and chronic injuries threatened Curry’s early career, but he’s otherwise been mostly healthy.
He’s the fulcrum of the Warriors’ offense that leverages the gravity of his shooting and off-ball movement. Losing him at this point in the season, with 20 games remaining and every night representing a chance to move up or down the Western Conference Standings, could be brutal. And it seems like some are bracing for him to be sidelined.
“I know we’re going to miss him if he does have time off,” Klay Thompson said of his longtime backcourt partner. “We’ve been in this position before where he has had time off and we just got to do it collectively. I know he’ll be ready to go when he does come back, whenever that is. We just want to wish him a speedy recovery and to take his time.”
Before the Bulls game, Kerr noted that his team was finally healthy for the first time since the very start of the season. Thursday was the second game he had a full complement of players within the structure of their newfound identity: starting Draymond Green at center and Brandin Podziemski in Klay Thompson’s place.
All that continuity and identity gets tossed aside if Curry isn’t a part of it. If Curry has to miss time, the Warriors will likely have to change the way they play. Chris Paul, one of the greatest point guards of all time, will determine more possessions. Perhaps Kerr will re-insert Thompson back into the starting lineup for more spacing.
“No one is Steph Curry,” Green said. “That definitely will change things, but we know the sets that we like to get to with Chris in the game and what he is great at. We will do more of what he’s great at.”
Paul is 38 years old and just recently came back from a fractured hand. While he’s been effective when healthy this year, throwing together a spread pick-and-roll offense around him on the fly probably isn’t tenable. Running split actions without the threat of Curry’s perimeter shooting won’t be as effective. Trusting Podziemski and Jonathan Kuminga with more playmaking duties, in the home stretch of the season, could be risky.
The options, of course, will be worse if Curry has to miss time. But they’ll have no choice but to find away.
“If he is out, that’s unfortunate, but it’s part of it,” Thompson said. “With the length of the season, it’s hard to play every game, especially without having minor injuries. We’ll do well without him. We’ll rely on our history and how to execute.”