Stephen Curry puts up 29 in return, nearly hands Warriors win
SAN FRANCISCO — Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry scored 29 points in 26 minutes Sunday night against the Houston Rockets, providing a resounding return after a 27-game absence missing only the final punctuation mark.
Curry brought the Warriors back by 10 points in the final five minutes and lined up a game-winning 30-foot shot at the buzzer, but the jumper missed long and the Warriors lost 117-116.
“It felt great when it left his hands,” Rockets forward Kevin Durant said. “I was a little nervous seeing that ball in the air.”
Curry’s night started with a bang. He volunteered to come off the bench to help manage his minutes and replaced his brother, Seth Curry, with 4:54 left in the first quarter, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd. In his first sequence, Curry missed a shot and committed a travel infraction.
“The first inning was tough,” Curry said. “The second run was great.”
Curry played the final six minutes of the second quarter and began to generate a rhythm, scoring seven points.
In the third quarter, Kerr finally stretched it, playing Curry the final 7:58 of the quarter. Curry scored 11 points during that stint and 11 more in seven minutes of the fourth quarter, finishing with 29 and exceeding his minutes total beyond the original plan by about 24.
“I don’t think there’s a tougher defender in the league that he can play his first game against than Amen Thompson,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “It’s quite a test. Steph looked amazing.”
Curry said after the game that he expected a similar workload Tuesday night against the Sacramento Kings, but acknowledged that the NBA schedule creates urgency.
There are only four games left in the regular season, and Curry will likely only play three of them before the Warriors face a do-or-die playoff game the following week in the play-in tournament against the LA Clippers or Portland Trail Blazers. They will need to win twice to make their way to the playoffs.
“You have to be smart and do the right thing for the right reasons,” Curry said. “All I’m looking forward to is Tuesday.”
Kerr said Curry will return to the starting lineup in the near future, but the franchise is taking a cautious approach to an “unpredictable” knee injury that has kept him sidelined more than two months after initially saying he thought he would miss only 7 to 10 days.
Curry called “runner’s knee” — persistent pain and swelling he has to deal with — the “new normal,” while reiterating that there are no structural issues with his right knee and that he doesn’t feel compromised.
The Warriors are 36-42, meaning they will finish below .500 for the first time since the 2019-20 season. They are almost certain to finish 10th, but believe they can become a playoff threat again in the coming days with Curry in the lineup and veteran center Al Horford likely to return from a calf strain by the weekend.
“You can just feel it,” Kerr said. “We’re back in the mix. We’re back in the fight with Steph. … It doesn’t take much for him to find his rhythm. His rhythm is our rhythm too. … He changes everything.”
