{"id":634941,"date":"2026-03-02T18:47:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/634941\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T18:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:47:15","slug":"nba-analysts-highlight-whats-helping-the-warriors-give-stephen-curry-the-proper-time-for-his-knee-injury-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/634941\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Analysts Highlight What\u2019s Helping the Warriors Give Stephen Curry the Proper Time for His Knee Injury Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

This season hasn\u2019t exactly gone the way Golden State Warriors fans hoped it would\u2026 The Jimmy Butler injury, the Jonathan Kuminga saga, which ended at this year\u2019s trade deadline, and the Kristaps Porzingis illness have left the Dubs in a wobbly situation. All of this, however, pales in comparison to what\u2019s going on with Steph Curry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Butler, the 2025 trade deadline\u2019s prize acquisition, went down mid-January this year with a torn ACL. It ended his season and possibly most or all of next season as well. Steve Kerr and Jonathan Kuminga were never able to stay on the same page, and their standoff was mercifully ended when the Warriors shipped him to Atlanta a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Golden State hasn\u2019t exactly looked like the winners of that trade, though. Kuminga<\/a> has been tearing it up in his first few games with the Hawks, while Porzingis has only played 17 minutes with the Dubs and is now back on the shelf with an illness. Meanwhile, Curry has missed the past nine games with a knee injury.<\/p>\n

Steph has long been the heartbeat of the Warriors, and without him, it\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that the team has little chance to contend. After the team declared on Sunday that Curry would be reevaluated in 10 days, it\u2019s clear that he\u2019s not all that close to coming back yet.<\/p>\n

On The Hoop Collective, Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps, however, agreed that this isn\u2019t necessarily a death blow to the Warriors\u2019 chances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, they\u2019re gonna make the decisions based on Steph\u2019s knee, I\u2019m not saying they\u2019re making decisions on trying to get the 7- or the 8-seed in the West,\u201d Windhorst said<\/a>. \u201cBut one thing that has made it a little easier on the Warriors is that the teams behind them are losing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Golden State\u2019s position in the standings has been the same even though they\u2019ve gone 4-5 without Steph. They\u2019re currently eighth in the West, three 3 games behind the Suns but 2.5 ahead of the Clippers, 3 ahead of the Blazers, and 7.5 ahead of the almost surely lottery-bound Grizzlies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Warriors are guaranteed, GUA-RAN-TEED, to quote our guy Charles Barkley, of being no lower than 10th no matter what they do the rest of the season,\u201d Bontemps said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got maximum flexibility to try to coax Steph\u2019s knee back as much as they can and get him ready to go for whatever the stretch run is going to look like, if they can get him out there at all,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost a blessing in disguise that the Warriors aren\u2019t higher up in the standings, because then there might be pressure to stay there. Where they are now, there\u2019s no hope of climbing into the top six, but also no worries about falling below 10th.<\/p>\n

It would be nice to only have to win one play-in game to reach the playoffs. But the front office and coaching staff can rest easy knowing that they can use most of the regular season to get players like Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski ready for larger postseason roles.<\/p>\n

Even if Steph comes back at full strength, those players will be vital to filling Butler\u2019s missing production. And even though this hasn\u2019t been the Warriors\u2019 year, it isn\u2019t over yet.<\/p>\n

Steph, even at 37, is one of the few guys in the league who can put a team on his back. So if he can make it back and look like his old self, the rest of the league will need to pay attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This season hasn\u2019t exactly gone the way Golden State Warriors fans hoped it would\u2026 The Jimmy Butler injury,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,479,164,4025,4024,6,932,83030,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-634941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golden-state-warriors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-golden-state","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-goldenstate","12":"tag-goldenstatewarriors","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-steph-curry","15":"tag-the-hoop-collective-podcast","16":"tag-warriors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116161075362244695","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}