SAN FRANCISCO — It’s the question that will keep Stephen Curry up at night this summer.
“It’s the great ‘What if?'” Curry pondered Thursday morning inside the Warriors’ home arena, where the only signs of life were the WNBA’s Valkyries getting ready for their season opener. The Warriors’ season came to an end Wednesday night with Curry unable to do anything but watch.
“It’s tough, man. That’s a first for me,” Curry said, reflecting on his powerless vantage point for the final four games — all losses — after he strained his left hamstring in the first half of Game 1 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who advanced to the Western Conference Finals with a 121-110 win.
“To sit on the sidelines, it’s weird,” he continued. “You wish you were out there to be able to do something about it. But it just wasn’t in the cards this year. … All we wanted was a chance, and to finish the year like we did, to sneak in the Playoffs and win that first round, there’s a lot to be proud of for sure, considering where we were.
“But definitely disappointed, and frankly just sad that I wasn’t out there able to play.”
Without their primary offensive weapon, the Warriors simply ran out of firepower against the Timberwolves, who got at least 20 points from both Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle in four of the series’ five games and were held below 100 just once — in the Warriors’ only win.
Curry’s absence, particularly for the do-or-die Game 5, and the Warriors’ inability to eke out one win without him on the court was made all more excruciating by how close he was to returning. If Golden State could have forced a Game 6, Curry would have had three extra days before what would have been a home game Sunday.
“Everything was kind of aligned for Game 6,” he said. “I had some testing to do, and who knows how that would have went because I haven’t gone live since Game 1. First time dealing with this injury. I was pretty optimistic, but there were a couple more checkpoints to get through.”
It was a mixed bag of emotions inside the Bill King media room as the Warriors processed the ending of their season. On the one hand, they accomplished Curry’s stated motive of playing “meaningful” basketball. They played deeper into the postseason than anyone could have envisioned before the acquisition of Jimmy Butler III. On the other, a second-round exit fell short of what they felt was possible with the trio of Curry, Butler and Draymond Green.
The Warriors started 12-3, then lost 12 of their next 15 games. They were teetering around the 10th seed and the possibility of the play-in — or missing the postseason entirely — before the trade deadline. But after they were eliminated with health preventing Butler from playing up to his full potential and Curry from playing at all, Kerr was clear about the potential he saw in the group.
With a healthy Curry, Kerr said, “I know we had a shot. I know we could’ve gone the distance.”
The group finished the regular season 23-7 before their health caught up to them, and Curry echoed a similar sentiment.
“That’s the story you’re going to tell yourself when you lay your head down on the pillow every night for the next couple weeks until whoever wins the championship because that’s the belief that we did have,” he said. “We’ll imagine and believe that we could have won everything had we been healthy. But you move on.”
Looking ahead to the summer and next season, Curry and Green both noted that the midseason addition of Butler gives them far more clarity than they had heading into this season, when they were rumored to be involved with any potential running mate for Curry that became available.
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When healthy, Curry, Butler and Green showed what they were capable of over the final 30 games of the regular season.
“When September rolls around and there’s 29 teams that ended their year disappointed in some way, shape or form who are excited about making a charge like we want to be as confident as possible coming into next year, and I think that window … that meant something,” Curry said. “That was real.
“I got hurt in Game 1; obviously that changed a lot. But we have a lot to be, again, proud of and a lot to build off of for next year.”
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