Update on Curry’s injury Thursday 12 noon PST– The Warriors didn’t have practice today but instead met for a film session. Golden State’s head coach Steve Kerr addressed the media regarding Stephen Curry’s injury from yesterday’s game.
“I don’t really have any update,” said head Steve Kerr. “I haven’t even talked to him about it. We had a film session just now. We expect him to play tomorrow, but I don’t have any details.”
Curry also answered question about his injury.
“I’m going to play,” Curry said. “That’s all I know right now. About ten and a half hours of sleep, a couple dunks in the ice bucket and that’s about it for now. Then take advantage of today and tomorrow to get completely ready for the game. Get as much recovery and healing as possible and understand how important Game 4 is. I’m excited about the opportunity.”
Curry referred to his injury before when Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics and Curry dove for a loose ball that caused Curry to miss time during the regular season when the Warriors hosted the Celtics back in March.
“Because I went through what I went through in the regular season and coming back, I know exactly what it is and what I’ve got to deal with and the soreness/pain level and all that,” explained Curry. “So once I got checked out last night, I knew I wouldn’t have to go get any extra tests just because we’ve been through this before.
Like I said, this is almost the identical type play. This one just wasn’t as bad as that one. As soon as you started to take a couple of steps, you kind of know whether you can run normal, cut normal or not. Back then, I couldn’t. Yesterday, I could. That gave me a little bit of confidence knowing it wasn’t as bad.
We’ll see how it feels tomorrow. I know I’m going to play, but just see how it responds to that type of impact.”
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Boston – Stephen Curry scored a game-high 31 points and hit six three-pointers but that wasn’t enough to stop the Boston Celtics from going up 2-1 in the series. The Celtics 116-110 victory over Golden State put Boston in control of the NBA Finals with Game 4 this Friday back at TD Garden.
“First half we didn’t guard the ball well at all,’ Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said. “That was really the main issue, was the point of attack defense. They got past us. It wasn’t based on any sets they were running. It was more just they were coming downhill at us, and they got past us and that hurt us.”
An absolute offensive effort by the Warriors who were down by 18 points in the first half was wiped away by the end of the third quarter. Curry hit back-to-back 3s to trim the lead to 68-72 despite getting his fourth foul. A few more 3s and a trip to line put Golden State ahead 85-83.
Boston pulled away late in the third and never looked back. They are now two wins away from winning their 18th championship for the franchise. Draymond Green fouled out with 4:07 left in the game. On the same play that Green earned his sixth foul, Curry dove to the floor on a jump ball and got injured.
Al Horford who also went for the loose ball landed on Curry’s leg causing him to grimace as he got up. Curry’s injury didn’t force him out of the game but Kerr sat him on the bench with two minutes left in the game. Golden State was down by 14 points and didn’t look like they were going to catch up.
“The injury didn’t force him out of the game, but I took him out down 14 with two minutes left because we weren’t going to catch up,” said Kerr.
Jaylen Brown scored 27 for the Celtics, Jason Tatum added 26 and Marcus Smart had 24 points to dominate Game 3. Boston had 15 rebounds vs the Warriors 6 in total. The Celtics defensively shut Golden State down forcing them to score only 11 points in the fourth period.
“If I approach the game differently, there’s no big X’s and O’s adjustment in the NBA Finals,” Green said. “You know what they do. They know what you do. They played with more force in the game tonight, and we have to come out and do that on Friday.”
I’ll be all right. I got caught — obviously in some pain, but I’ll be all right,” said Curry. “See how it feels tomorrow and get ready for Friday. That first two or three minutes kind of set the tone for the rest of the fourth and gave them a little bit of a cushion. We had a hard time responding after that.
So between the first three minutes of the fourth and the first 12 minutes of the game, that was pretty much it.”
The Warriors fell to 3-5 on the road during the current postseason, tonight marked the team’s second-consecutive road loss. Golden State outscored Boston, 33-25, in the third quarter. In the Finals, the Warriors have outscored the Celtics, 106-63 (+43), in the third quarter (35.3 to 21.0 ppg). Golden State’s 11 fourth-quarter points are the second fewest the team has scored in a postseason fourth quarter all-time (nine points on 3/23/50 vs. Syracuse).
Photo by Warriors/Twitter
