Warriors to Keep Stephen Curry on Injured List Amid Playoff ‘Goal’

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Stephen Curry #30 of the Golden State Warriors prepares for warm-up with assistant coach Bruce Fraser

Even when the Golden State Warriors have a healthy Stephen Curry on hand, as we have seen and coach Steve Kerr has frequently reminded us, their margin for error is pretty low. This is a team that is deep in role players, after all, but with Jimmy Butler lost to a torn ACL, it is a team that lacks the surefire star power required to roll over lesser teams in the NBA.

Without Curry, the Warriors are all but hopeless. The team traded for Kristaps Porzingis at the NBA deadline, and to say that deal looks like a dud is an understatement–Porzingis has been beset by an illness after having returned from an Achilles tendon injury, and has played just one game in the near-month that he has been in Golden State.

The Warriors are a fun but overmatched team without its stars, but a funny thing has happened in the NBA standings as winter soon flips to spring–there aren’t a lot of teams in the Western Conference clamoring to move up int he standings.

Warriors Stuck in Play-In in Western Conference

And maybe that makes things easy on the Warriors. They are playing poorly lately, no doubt, having gone 6-10 in their last 16 games. But yet, their position in the standings has not changed at all. The Warriors were No. 8 in the Western Conference on the day after Butler got hurt, January 20. Now, despite all they’ve been through with the Porzingis deal and Curry’s absence, they’re still No. 8.

They’re 3.0 games behind the Suns and probably not catching them at No. 7. They could lose out on No. 8 to the Clippers, but they’re unlikely to drop behind the Blazers to No. 10.

Any way you look at it, the Warriors are almost certainly a lock to make the play-in tournament on one hand and almost certainly a lock to not make the playoffs (Top 6) on the other hand.

Stephen Curry to Be Sidelined ‘As Long as They Can’

With that in mind, according to former Warriors beat writer Matt Steinmetz, who now co-hosts a show on 95.7 The Game in San Francisco, expect the Warriors to milk the knee injury to Stephen Curry as long as possible. There is little to gain by hurrying Curry back, and little to lose by trudging through the next few weeks without him.

“There are gonna be nights when they are just not gonna compete. People are saying they’re tanking, and I don’t think they’re tanking,” Steinmetz said. “People are saying Steph’s gonna get shut down—I don’t think Steph’s gonna get shut down. They are right now, the eighth seed in the West. They got a couple games between them and the seven, and a couple games between them and the nine.

“And to me, it’s apparent what’s happening here, they’re going to rest Stephen Curry as long as they can and then, mid-to-late March, maybe early April, he’ll come back. And at that point, they’ll still be at eight and they’ll hope to win one play-in game. The goal right now is easy. It’s to make the playoffs. If they make the playoffs, they will be able to live with themselves.”

Sean Deveney is a veteran sports reporter covering the NBA, NFL and MLB for Heavy.com. He has written for Heavy since 2019 and has more than two decades of experience covering the NBA, including 17 years as the lead NBA reporter for the Sporting News. Deveney is the author of 7 nonfiction books, including “Fun City,” “Before Wrigley became Wrigley,” and “Facing Michael Jordan.” More about Sean Deveney