Let’s be honest about something first.
When Stephen Curry left that January 30th game against Detroit with what we’d eventually learn was runner’s knee, the Warriors didn’t just lose their best player. They lost the arguments about playoff positioning, and optimistic projections about this team’s ceiling, because every reason to believe evaporated with him.
Seventy-five days later, Steph Curry completed his first full practice in two months on Tuesday. Steve Kerr confirmed he’ll miss Wednesday’s game
against San Antonio and is “doubtful” for Thursday against Cleveland, but you could hear it anyway. The man is coming back. Or at least… something close to him.
You don’t run 5-on-5 in April unless something inside the building believes he should come back. Now the real question hits: should he? And what exactly are we supposed to expect from it?
On the “should he” part, Curry answered that himself back on March 15th after Golden State dropped a 110-107 game at Madison Square Garden. “That’s not who we are,” he said. “If we have stuff to play for, we play. So, I’m working to get back.” That’s not bravado. That’s 38 years of competitive DNA refusing to negotiate. Curry has been pushing behind the scenes this entire time, hoping to get a rhythm before the Play-In tournament opens on April 15th. The training staff is the gatekeeper here, not sentiment, and they’ve apparently seen enough to let him scrimmage.
So yes, he should play. The question is what that actually looks like.
The Warriors are sitting at 36-39, good enough (or trash enough) for tenth in the West. Close enough to see it, far enough to feel stupid for looking. They’re 23.5 games behind Oklahoma City’s terrifying 60-16 operation. A game behind Portland for ninth, with seven games left to prove it.
Here is where the age conversation gets complicated in ways the discourse usually refuses to engage with honestly. Curry before the injury wasn’t running on fumes. He was running on jet fuel, dismantling defenses that had spent years specifically designing schemes to contain him, finding a second gear nobody planned for. He didn’t look like a player slowing down. He looked like one accelerating into something that nobody has an answer for.
Runner’s knee, technically patellofemoral pain syndrome, is a different animal from the ligament and ankle injuries that have historically threatened his availability. It’s an overuse injury. The treatment isn’t reconstruction. Translation: nothing’s broken. But everything’s tired.
Curry scrimmaging two months after the injury is genuinely encouraging from a structural standpoint.
The realistic expectation for his return is probably 20 to 28 minutes of strategic deployment. What you will see is the Curry who makes the offense coherent again, who forces defenses into decisions they haven’t had to make in months, who gives Brandin Podziemski and Gui Santos actions they cannot generate on their own. Without Curry, those actions simply don’t exist.
The story is whether this team, which has battled through Moses Moody’s season-ending injury, Jimmy Butler’s ACL, and two months without the greatest point guard in basketball history, can find enough juice to force its way into the postseason and make some noise. If Curry comes back at 80 percent of what he was in January, that 80 percent is still better than what most teams can put on the floor at full capacity.
That knee might rattle. It might smoke again.
But smoke coming from under the hood doesn’t always mean the engine is done. Sometimes it just means the car needs a minute. My first car was a 2000 Saturn with 226,000 miles that put up that smoke for three years before it finally quit on me. And in those three years, it got me everywhere I needed to go.
Steph Curry is not a 2000 Saturn. He’s a heavily armed Galaxy-class warship with plasma cannons and photon torpedos.
He’s going to get the Dubs where they need to go.
