Warriors can’t wait on Curry any longer
HOUSTON — Stephen Curry has created so much magic for the Warriors over his nine-year NBA career, and he has two championships and two league MVP awards to prove it.
The 30-foot 3-point shots, the crazy acrobatics under the rim, the infectious joy that he brings to the game — there’s no one else in the NBA who has a set of spells quite like Curry.
But since Curry has come back from his left knee injury at the beginning of the month, he hasn’t been able to find his wand.
Curry has made himself useful in other ways for the Golden State Warriors while he’s tried to re-establish his game — setting screens, deflecting passes creating space for teammates, focusing on his defense — and he, his teammates, and his coaches all agree that a breakout is looming.
The Warriors really could have used that breakout on Wednesday.
Two days after stealing the Houston Rockets’ home-court advantage behind an inspired performance in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, the Warriors let their guard down and were punished mightily by a Houston team that played with more heart, rhythm, and composure en route to a 127-105 Game 2 victory.
As such, this series will head back to Oakland tied at 1. Not bad in the big picture for the Warriors, but no doubt disappointing — the Warriors had a chance Wednesday to practically end this series and didn’t come close to taking it.
Instead, we saw the Rockets establish that they are as good as they were advertised to be coming into this series — the showed that their limp Game 1 performance isn’t the only way they can play. This is a team that the Warriors cannot mess around and expect to beat, and in Game 2, everyone wearing white, yellow, and blue but Kevin Durant messed around.
Durant held up his end of the bargain in Game 2, scoring 38 points on nearly 60 percent shooting, and he kept the Warriors within striking distance after the team jumped out to a poor start, turning the ball over seven times in the first quarter.
But no one else was able to strike.
Curry wasn’t the only Warrior who failed to perform Wednesday, but his lackluster performance is the most noteworthy. He was outscored by Rockets’ role players PJ Tucker and Trevor Ariza, netting only 16 points, shooting only 36 percent from the field, and making only one of eight 3-point attempts.
“Obviously it wasn’t Steph’s best night,” Kerr said. “I’m not worried about Steph ... he’s feeling good ... he’s getting better. I thought he played a lot better in Game 1 than anybody gave him credit for.”
Curry deserved plaudits for the little things he did in Game 1, but the time for little things is over for Curry. The Warriors are facing a real threat in the Rockets and the Warriors need their original superstar — the man from whom all of this success emanates — to come up big in Game 3 and beyond.
When Curry was out of the lineup, the Warriors ran their offense through Durant and his mid-range mastery. Against teams like the Spurs and Pelicans, the Warriors could get away with a rather one-dimensional half-court offense. Not against these Rockets — it’s going to take more firepower than one man, even one as impressive as Durant, can provide.
The Rockets are good, but they cannot keep up with a Warriors team that is locked on the defensive end, getting easy offense from Durant (there’s no reason to think that’ll stop anytime soon), and a full-fledged Curry performance.
Here’s one thing you shouldn’t do: blame Curry’s left MCL injury for the poor performance.
There’s simply no evidence that it’s hindering the Warriors’ guard is still hindered physically. He showed solid burst going to the hoop Wednesday — 12 points in the paint — and his defensive failures didn’t look any different than his defensive failures before he suffered a Grade 2 sprain of the knee ligament.
Both Curry and Kerr denied, adamantly, that the guard’s knee is playing a role in his recent struggles, though when Kerr was asked how much Curry’s poor performance Wednesday had to do with the knee, he had to get in a shot: “13.7 percent” he joked.