Warriors’ Steph Curry has time to heal with team destined for NBA play-in tournament

SAN FRANCISCO — All Steph Curry has ever wanted, he has said repeatedly, is to play meaningful basketball. The final four weeks of the Warriors’ regular season look to be anything but.

So why bother involving Curry, at all?

“Based on where they are in the standings, all their other injuries, I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to push him back out there,” said Dr. Nirav Pandya, an orthopedic surgeon at UC San Francisco who specializes in sports. “Particularly if he hasn’t even practiced yet.”

Curry, soon to be 38, will miss his 12th consecutive game Thursday when the Warriors (31-30) visit the Rockets to begin a three-game road trip. Inflammation in his right knee, commonly known as runner’s knee, has kept the Golden State superstar sidelined since the end of January.

The Warriors have gone 4-7 during Curry’s absence — 8-14 in all 22 games he has missed this season — and seen their position in the NBA playoff picture crystalize.

They’ve hardly budged from the No. 8 spot in the Western Conference, even before they lost Jimmy Butler for the season to an ACL injury and Curry for the past 1.5 months. It would be a difficult task to catch the Lakers, the last team on the right side of the play-in bubble that thoroughly dismantled an undermanned Golden State squad last weekend, if Curry were at full strength.

And he’s not.

“We’re just wiped out right now, injury-wise,” coach Steve Kerr said Tuesday on the “Tom Tolbert Show.” Add rotation regulars Moses Moody (wrist) and Will Richard (ankle) to an injury report that already included Curry, Butler and Kristaps Porzingis. 

That is on the good nights, when Al Horford and De’Anthony Melton don’t have to rest on a back-to-back, and Draymond Green’s back doesn’t flare up.

The upside is that there’s only so far the Warriors can fall.

Kerr said he doesn’t discuss their postseason outlook with his team. But he pays attention to the standings. Golden State would have to fall 7.5 games to miss the cut entirely.

“It sure looks like we’re heading for the play-in,” Kerr said, noting the “big drop-off” between the 10th-seeded Trail Blazers and five tanking teams below them.

In that case, what’s the point in hurrying Curry back?

According to Pandya, the sports doctor, the best treatment for what’s ailing Curry is simply to rest. If the situation was really do or die, Pandya said, “he could technically play.” MRIs have shown no structural damage, according to the Warriors. It would just be a matter of managing the pain and impact on his game. Mobility is key for Curry, who runs more miles than any player.

“The longer you rest this, the better it’s going to be for him,” Pandya said.

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While Curry has expressed frustration over the injury’s “unpredictable” nature, Pandya said it typically takes his patients about three months before they’re back to normal.

That would stretch the timeline to the start of May. Unless they decide to punt on this season, the Warriors can’t wait that long. But they could let Curry heal until their inevitable date with the play-in.

Allowing Curry to ramp up in practice behind the scenes — he is currently only doing individual conditioning — before returning for the play-in “would be the ideal scenario,” Pandya said. “It’s almost like you’re filling up his gas tank.”

No matter what, it seems that some assortment of the Warriors, Suns, Clippers and Blazers will compete for the chance to meet the Thunder or the Spurs in Round 1. The best-case scenario gets the Warriors two chances to win one home game to advance; at worst, they would need to win two on the road. Wouldn’t the extra rest for Curry make an even bigger difference?

“Seven or eight would be way better, for sure,” Kerr said. “You absolutely want seven or eight. Seven’s ideal. You get two home games. You want two cracks at it, rather than having to win two games outright.”

The Warriors were at a less meaningful crossroads before the pandemic paused the 2019-20 season. Without Kevin Durant or Klay Thompson, Golden State limped to a 15-50 finish — the Warriors’ worst record in the 12 seasons Kerr has been their coach.

Green believes the situation is relevant to the current discussion, and he knows where he comes down.

“Shutting Steph down for the rest of the year is not something that is just gonna happen barring that he can play,” Green said on a recent episode of his podcast, “the Draymond Green Show.”

Curry broke his hand in the fourth game that season. But even with the Warriors’ fate sealed, at 14-48, Curry returned two games before the season was canceled.

“He was preparing to come back in the season where we had won 15 games because you know he loves to play basketball,” Green said. “So, I say that from experience when I say he’s not just going to shut it down just to shut it down. It’s not who he is.”