Curry’s ankle raises worries
OAKLAND, CALIF .• Most of the announced crowd of 19,596 fans attending Game 2 of the playoff series between the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets wore golden- coloured T- shirts reading “Strength in Numbers.” But the motto written on the Warriors’ latest marketing giveaway carried a deeper meaning.
The positive message did not account for the subtraction of Stephen Curry: the 30.1 fewer points per game, the lost 402 3- pointers this season, the missing 34 minutes, on average, of mustwatch playing time.
Curry, the most valuable player on the league’s best team, missed Game 2 with an ankle injury sustained in Game 1. Golden State still won, 115-106, but Curry’s absence reminded the Warriors just how much their success and their hopes rest on Curry’s lower extremities.
It was a few seasons ago, before Curry became the league’s most exciting player and the Warriors became its best team, that Curry was as well- known for his tender ankles as for his rainbow jumpers.
It remains unclear how serious the injury is, and how much it hobbles Golden State’s expectations of a repeat championship, if at all. Curry appeared to twist his right ankle late in the second quarter of Game 1. He returned after halftime and played less than three minutes before Kerr pulled him from the court.
“I didn’ t like the way he was moving when he went back out there,” the coach explained. Besides, the Warriors were on their way to blowing the Rockets away, 104-78. Curry was not needed.
But when he did not practise on Sunday, and did not participate in the morning shootaround on Monday, and did not play Monday night, the suggestion that Curry had left the game merely as a precautionary measure took a more serious tone. Bay Area news reports and talk-radio conversations centered on the one piece of kryptonite that could stop the Warriors’ championship aspirations — the loss of Curry to injury.
It was a bit of a flashback for the Warriors and their fans. Curry’s ankle problems began in his second season, five years ago. Curry had surgery on a tendon in his right ankle in May 2011 and another operation in 2012, missing all but 26 games in the season between. There have been few problems since. Curry has played at least 78 of each regular season’s 82 games and had never missed a playoff game. Then, the ankle. “He understands that we have, first of all, his best interest at heart — his career,” Kerr said before the game. “We know that he had surgery on that ankle four years ago. He’s got a lot of basketball ahead of him.”