MINNEAPOLIS — The Golden State Warriors knew reality was coming, they just wanted a night to soak in the win before hearing the news on Stephen Curry.
As expected, Curry will miss at least a week with a left hamstring strain he suffered in Tuesday’s Game 1 of the Warriors’ second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Hopefully, for the Warriors’ sake, Curry can re-emerge with the series still alive.
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There’s no “win one for Steph” speech head coach Steve Kerr can give the Warriors because everything revolves around him.
“He’s like Tim Duncan in San Antonio, Michael Jordan in Chicago,” Kerr said Wednesday afternoon. “None of it happens without Steph. And everybody knows that. The whole team understands that.”
Playing without Curry in the playoffs isn’t necessarily new for the Warriors, but the days of having Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant to carry things are long gone. Even with Curry, the Warriors were piecing things together around an older core.
So there’s the hope — although not an expectation — that perhaps Curry can return before a potential Game 6 on May 18 in San Francisco, which would be 12 days after the injury. Game 5 is May 14 in Minneapolis, but that seems to be cutting it very close.
It would require the Warriors to win at least one more game following their opening win Tuesday night.
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“So we’re in that room right now talking about how we’re going to approach it, what the lineups will look like,” Kerr said. “And it’s all … it’s all part of it. I mean, every year, playoffs are about adapting, whether it’s a game plan or an injury or lineup.
“So we just have to adapt. And we’ve done this before, and we’re confident we can do this again.”
It seems like a taller task in the moment, considering how critical Curry is to an offense that struggles to score without him. Draymond Green had an offensive explosion of sorts in Game 1, hitting four triples in a playoff game for the first time since 2017.
“I’m not gonna let that reality set in right now. We’ll start figuring that out tomorrow,” Green said Tuesday night.
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“Obviously, things get tougher if we got to go forward without Steph. But it’s the same mission. We’re trying to keep this thing going to win as many games as we can.”
Reality is here, and it starts with Curry likely being on the bench for Thursday’s game, as opposed to flying back to San Francisco. Kerr will have to tilt his offense more toward Jimmy Butler, who’s capable of high usage. Kerr said when the franchise acquired Butler at the trade deadline that the coaching staff looked at a lot of film of Butler in Miami, where he was an offensive hub.
“We’re absolutely going to rely on Jimmy like we have, when Steph has been off the floor the last couple months,” Kerr said. “We basically run everything through Jimmy in those moments, so he’ll take on more responsibility. But we we can’t just rely on him.”
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Golden State’s defense has been tops in the league since acquiring Butler, and the Warriors were quite physical with the Timberwolves on the boards in Game 1. Timberwolves coach Chris Finch claimed Rudy Gobert was roughed up too much and said he sent tapes to the league as evidence.
Kerr doesn’t disagree — but with his own caveats.
“Everybody’s fouling each other,” Kerr said. “I just feel like, they [refs] have a really hard job, because playoff basketball is, yes, it’s physical, and they’re going to allow more, but I think they could have called a foul six, seven straight possessions with them guarding Steph. And so I got my complaints, too.”
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