Curry prognosis:
Warriors guard “continues to make good progress,” but will miss Wednesday’s game. Meanwhile, the NBA says officials missed three calls against Kevin Durant late in Monday’s win against Cleveland.
Stephen Curry will miss at least one more game with a sprained right ankle, the Warriors announced Tuesday afternoon.
Team doctors determined Tuesday that Curry “continues to make good progress overall” and “will be able to build his tolerance by increasing his on-court practice demands,” Golden State said in a news release. The team hopes to have a clearer timetable on his return after re-evaluating him Friday.
That leaves the Warriors without Curry, who scrimmaged late last week, for at least Wednesday’s home game against Utah. Golden State will host Charlotte on Friday and Memphis on Saturday before hitting the road for a three-game trip.
With around a minute left in the Warriors’ 125-115 win in New Orleans on Dec. 4, Curry lunged for a steal, missed and tried to stop himself from falling. His foot turned awkwardly, sending him tumbling. Curry climbed to his feet and limped toward the visitors’ locker room with a team trainer.
An MRI exam confirmed that he’d sprained his right ankle, but also that the ankle was stable and structurally intact. The initial diagnosis — that Curry would miss at least two weeks — raised a question that Golden State hadn’t answered since a slew of right ankle sprains limited Curry’s 2011-12 season to 26 games: How would it handle an extended regular-season stretch without the face of the franchise?
The good news for the Warriors is that they’re as equipped as any NBA team to weather the absence of a player of Curry’s caliber. With the two-time MVP out the past nine games, Golden State has gone 8-1. Missed calls: Officials missed three calls on Kevin Durant late in Golden State’s Christmas Day win over Cleveland, the league announced Tuesday in its Last Two Minute Report.
Per the NBA release, referees first missed a call against Durant with 1:12 left after he made contact with LeBron James. The league also determined that Durant should have been called for two personal fouls on James’ drive to the basket with less than 30 seconds left.
Had Durant been whistled for a foul on that play, James would have stepped to the foul line with a chance to trim the Warriors’ three-point lead to one.
That all came after an incident early in the game that left many wondering why Durant hadn’t been ejected.
Midway through the first period, after Cleveland point guard Jose Calderon was called for a foul, Durant appeared to shove Calderon with the ball. Little more than a minute earlier, Durant had been given a technical for jawing with a referee. Giving him a second technical for shoving Calderon would’ve meant tossing Durant from the NBA’s featured game on its most-viewed day of the regular season.