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Warriors guard Stephen Curry has been planning how to manage his body for the upcoming season, after knee problems cost him two months during the 2025-26 campaign.<\/p>\n
Stephen Lam\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) walks gingerly during the first half of his NBA play-in tournament game against the Phoenix Suns at Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix, Ariz., Friday, April 17, 2026.<\/p>\n
Stephen Lam\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
DONGGUAN, CHINA – SEPTEMBER 12: NBA star Stephen Curry watches the game during the Guangdong City Basketball League All-Star Game on September 12, 2026 in Dongguan, Guangdong Province of China. (Photo by Chen Jimin\/China News Service\/VCG via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Chen Jimin\/China News Service via Getty Images<\/p>\n
It was the hobble heard \u2019round the world. Could you call it a hobble, really? Perhaps a limp. A shuffle. The specific verbiage means something, here, because there are only so many words left to be written in the playing journey of\u00a0Stephen Curry<\/a>, and one<\/a> single 21-second clip earlier this month presented an existential vulnerability the world has not quite seen.<\/p>\n On Sept. 9, Curry clambered out of a black Mercedes-Benz van in Beijing. A couple things were of interest. He wore a pair of what appeared to be Li-Ning<\/a> Croc-type slippers. He carried an obscenely large waterbottle. And most interesting, absolutely and inarguably, is that he took a few steps as if his knees had locked up.<\/p>\n A video of the scene, naturally, has 6.3 million views on X<\/a>, and made its way to the screen of 33-year-old teammate Gary Payton II<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWhen he had his little limp? He\u2019s just having a hard day!\u201d Payton grinned, speaking with the Chronicle this past Sunday<\/a>. \u201cWorkout day. It\u2019s nothing crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n His happy-go-lucky voice cracked.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Elsewhere, sects of the digital world went straight for the panic button. Curry, after all, missed two months of the 2025-26 season with knee issues that just wouldn\u2019t quite heal quick enough<\/a> for his liking, and acknowledged such issues<\/a> were his \u201cnew normal.\u201d The widespread term bandied about amid his absence\u00a0\u2014 \u201crunner\u2019s knee\u201d\u00a0\u2014 has been both vague enough to temper immediate concern of any destructive structural issues and undefinable enough to stoke long-term concerns that erupt at any sign of weakness.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the closest men to Curry chuckled at all of it. Because really, to trainer Brandon Payne<\/a>, this clip was only emblematic of a reality that Curry and Payne have been preparing for since he was a babier-faced 23-year-old in 2011.<\/p>\n Stephen Curry works with trainer Brandon Payne, left, in 2019. The two have been preparing for Curry\u2019s body to age since his early days with the Golden State Warriors.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jun Sato\/WireImage\/Getty Images<\/p>\n When asked this week for his reaction to the video, Payne responded to this Chronicle reporter: \u201cHow old are you?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cYoung man,\u201d Payne said, \u201cenjoy it while you have it. Because in a few years, every morning you get out of bed\u00a0\u2014 that\u2019s how you\u2019re going to look when you get out of bed, whether you like it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n He finished his thoughts, a couple minutes later, with a playful edge to his voice.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll put it to you this way,\u201d Payne said. \u201cI\u2019ll challenge anybody, over the age of 30, to get on a plane, and leave San Francisco, and fly to China, get off that plane, and then ride around in a car for a while, then get out of that car and walk around, and see how they\u2019re looking.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt would probably be pretty similar.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Two weeks after that video was captured, Curry ambled into a media scrum<\/a> at an Eat. Learn. Play foundation event at Oakland\u2019s Madison Park Primary on Wednesday. The limp was gone.<\/p>\n The knee, still, is \u201ctop of mind,\u201d as Curry said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, (it) should be,\u201d Curry told reporters. \u201cBut anybody at this age, and amount of miles, you\u2019re managing something. So, it\u2019s kind of part of the longevity aspect of this. And I\u2019m not afraid of it. I know what I need to do to, again, prepare myself to be ready to play.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the optimism of me doing what I need to do out there on the court is still there,\u201d he continued. \u201cI should hopefully look like myself, come opening night.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Stephen Curry talks with students on Wednesday during an event for his Eat. Learn. Play. foundation at Madison Park Academy Primary in Oakland.<\/p>\n Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n The question, though, isn\u2019t what Curry looks like at the start of training camp Tuesday in Hawaii, or when the Warriors tip off their season in Los Angeles Oct. 21. The question is what he looks like in Los Angeles in December, or New York in February, or in any scenario where Golden State can keep the wheels steady enough for a run into April.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, Curry\u2019s brilliance lies in his off-ball slipperiness: cutting, screening, leveraging the threat of the most devastating shot in league history. Still, a 37-year-old Curry led Golden State in average miles traveled on offense (1.3) per game last season. He\u2019ll face increasingly complex defensive gantlets for much of the season, given co-star Jimmy Butler\u2019s ongoing ACL rehab<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Golden State\u2019s staff is well aware, too, that opposing offenses will seek out Curry on the other end of the floor to wear him down, as teams have targeted him defensively for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t hunt him because he can\u2019t guard,\u201d Frank Vogel, the Warriors\u2019 new defensive head on staff, recently told the Chronicle<\/a>. \u201cHe can guard. They hunt him just to tire him out, and draw fouls. That\u2019s what every team in the league is going to (do), target the other team\u2019s best scorer just to tire \u2018em out.\u201d<\/p>\n And there is no world in which Curry can simply quick-fix his knee, or rewind the clock on the cartilage and tendon structure.<\/p>\n Stephen Curry was sidelined for two months last season while dealing with patellafemoral pain syndrome and bone bruising, a situation the Warriors star called \u201cfrustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a management game,\u201d said Dr. Stephen Valdes, a physical therapist who has\u00a0long worked with the Knicks\u2019 Josh Hart<\/a> through Hart\u2019s occasional knee issues<\/a>. \u201cThe way I say it \u2026 you get a bad grade on a report card, the bad grade\u2019s always going to show up on the report card. Now, you can do extra stuff, take AP, honors classes to bring up your GPA.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut you\u2019re always going to have the bad grade on your transcripts.\u201d<\/p>\n Across two months of injury updates, the Warriors reported Curry was dealing with \u201cpatella-femoral pain syndrome\/bone bruising in his right knee.\u201d Multiple sports medicine experts told the Chronicle that such a condition is actually different than \u201crunner\u2019s knee,\u201d which has been colloquially used to describe Curry\u2019s ailment<\/a>.<\/p>\n Patellafemoral pain syndrome, on its own, is actually quite manageable: Broadly, it occurs when the kneecap is displaced from its regular tracking motion. Could be due to cartilage degeneration. Could be due to tightness in surrounding muscles. But Curry\u2019s two-month-long absence, from a distance, confused Dr. Jes\u00fas Olmo, a sports medicine physician in London who once treated Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s knee issues as Real Madrid CF\u2019s former head of medical services<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cNormally, in a top athlete, it takes only a few days or weeks at the most to control these kind of things,\u201d Olmo said. \u201cSo I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n It even seemed a mystery to Curry himself, who told the Chronicle in February the injury\u2019s ambiguity was \u201cfrustrating.\u201d<\/a> But the key here, as Valdes explained, was likely the bone bruising\u00a0\u2014 if Curry\u2019s kneecap wasn\u2019t tracking properly over an already-bruised area, that would delay the natural healing process.<\/p>\n Offseason rest, Valdes said, would fix that issue. And Curry has designed what he dubbed a \u201cprescriptive plan\u201d inside a think-tank of Payne, Warriors medical guru Rick Celebrini and personal director of performance Carl Bergstrom<\/a>, who Valdes said is well-respected in the sports performance field.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stephen Curry speaks with Warriors director of sports medicine and performance Rick Celebrini during a game in 2023.<\/p>\n Stephen Lam\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n The 31-year-old Hart, a well-known hustler who helped the Knicks to a title in 2025-26, has dealt with on-and-off knee-tendinitis issues for nearly a decade. Their offseason, Valdes said, generally involves strengthening and building mass around the knee to account for natural degradation.\u00a0<\/p>\n The general thought process with Curry is similar, Payne confirmed. But as he explained, it\u2019s also been a summer of trial-and-error, placing varying degrees of stress on Curry in workouts to determine the necessary recovery on the back end.<\/p>\n The key: None of Curry\u2019s on-court movement patterns or style of play has changed or will change, Payne emphasized.<\/p>\n \u201cOverwhelmingly, this summer, it\u2019s been extremely positive,\u201d Payne said. \u201cI think I\u2019ve read some things where there\u2019s people that have a lot of concern. I think that\u2019s really overblown, quite frankly.\u201d<\/p>\n For 15 years, Payne has used an ever-widening array of gadgets to push one of the best players in history to cognitive overload. Goggles. Tennis balls. Quietly, too, he has long brought an iPad inside their rotation of sweat-laden gyms.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI just didn\u2019t show it to any of you guys,\u201d Payne cracked, referencing the wider media landscape, \u201cuntil now.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n His goal in offseason work these days, after 12 All-Star nods and 4,248 threes, is not to get Curry in a rhythm. It\u2019s to snap him out of it. To win, as Payne explains. Every summer brings added wrinkles to carefully designed reaction-time puzzles, in an attempt to hone Curry\u2019s response to the variety of information he processes on any given offensive possession.<\/p>\n Stephen Curry drives toward the basket against the Phoenix Suns last season. \u201cEverything that we started doing in 2011, \u201912, \u201913, was aimed at right now,\u201d trainer Brandon Payne says.<\/p>\n Stephen Lam\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n Payne, this summer, would flash the iPad at Curry, containing a sequence of three differently colored numbers. Each color represented a particular move, to lead Curry into a shot. Each number represented how many times Curry had to perform that move. He\u2019d have to react and execute that sequence as quickly as possible, and Payne would throw another at him, never with the same number corresponding to the same color.\u00a0<\/p>\n This has been the most intensive summer of mental work that Payne has ever put Curry through, and Curry would agree, Payne said. The rationale is simple.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything that we started doing in 2011, \u201912, \u201913, was aimed at right now,\u201d Payne said. \u201cWe were aiming at now. So if things changed physically\u00a0\u2014 that you make up the gap by being able to process and make decisions faster. So just now, we\u2019ve added more to it, we\u2019ve added more layers to it, because we have to continue to challenge him.\u201d<\/p>\n If they\u2019ve lightened any physical load\u00a0\u2014 and they sometimes have, solely in number of reps on drills\u00a0\u2014 they\u2019ve \u201cmore than taken the ceiling up\u201d on his neuro-cognitive workload, Payne asserted.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as I\u2019ve been doing this, every single workout that I\u2019ve had with Stephen Curry \u2026 there has been a workout in every one of those workouts where I\u2019m like, \u2018How the hell did he just do that? What am I watching right now? This is incredible,\u2019\u201d Payne said. \u201cAnd that is still there. There\u2019s still a moment in every workout where I\u2019m like, \u2018I don\u2019t even know how that just happened.\u2019 And as long as that keeps happening, I think you\u2019re going to keep seeing the same Stephen Curry.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd nothing this summer,\u201d Payne continued, \u201cwould lead me to believe that\u2019s changed at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephen Curry celebrates after hitting a 3-pointer against the Los Angeles Clippers in a play-in tournament game in April. Curry sat out nearly half of the Warriors\u2019 back-to-backs over the past two seasons.<\/p>\n Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n And yet, nobody is \u201cbeating Father Time,\u201d as Curry told CNBC\u00a0in an interview released Thursday<\/a>. Any specific variation of patellofemoral pain syndrome is more prone to flare up, as Valdes explained, during a particularly intensive game week or a sequence of back-to-backs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Golden State has sat Curry on either the front or the back-end of 45% of the team\u2019s back-to-back matchups the past two seasons. This will be a vital point for Curry, Celebrini and head coach Steve Kerr<\/a> to manage in 2027-28; Golden State has 15 different back-to-backs this season, and can hardly afford to load-manage in all 15 with Butler and Moses Moody<\/a> rehabbing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf it was me and it was my client, and he\u2019s 38,\u201d Valdes said, \u201cwhat\u2019s the purpose of playing back-to-backs?\u201d<\/p>\n A variety of truths await Curry, as soon as the Warriors touch down in paradise this week. He has limited time left, to finish his playing story. He has a \u201csense of urgency to capitalize on these next two years,\u201d as he told CNBC<\/a>. He has to play like Stephen Curry for any chance to do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n But can his body handle it?<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt, and worry,\u201d Payton II told the Chronicle, in mid-September. \u201cWe know Captain\u2019s going to take care of Captain. Do what he\u2019s going to do to lead us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>
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