Minneapolis – The Golden State Warriors knew that reality was going to arrive, they just wanted one night to dip in victory before hearing the news of Stephen Curry.
As expected, Curry will miss at least a week with tension with left hamstrings He suffered in Tuesday 1 match in the second round series of the Warriors against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Hopefully for the good of the Warriors, Curry can reappear with the series still alive.
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There is no “winning one for Steph's speech”, the head coach Steve Kerr cannot give to the Warriors because everything revolves around him.
“He's like Tim Duncan in San Antonio, Michael Jordan in Chicago,” Kerr said on Wednesday afternoon. “None of this happens without Steph. And everyone knows it. The whole team understands it.”
Playing curry without curry in the playoffs is not necessarily new for the Warriors, but the days when Klay Thompson and Kevin during transport have long been over. Even with Curry, the Warriors reconstructed things around an older nucleus.
So there is hope – but not an expectation – that Curry may be coming to a potential match 6 on May 18 in San Francisco, which would be 12 days after the injury. Match 5 is May 14 in Minneapolis, but it seems to cut it very closely.
The Warriors should win at least one more match after their opening victory on Tuesday evening.
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“So we are in this room right now talking about how we are going to approach it, what the alignments will look like,” said Kerr. “And everything is … all it is part. I mean, each year, the playoffs consist in adapting, whether it is a match plan or an injury or a program.
“So we have to adapt. And we have already done so, and we are convinced that we can start again. ”
This seems to be a bigger task in the moment, considering how critical of the curry is for an offense that has trouble scoring without him. Draymond Green had a kind of offensive explosion in match 1, hitting four triples in an eliminatory match for the first time since 2017.
“I'm not going to let this reality settle now. We're going to start understanding this tomorrow,” Green said on Tuesday evening.
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“Obviously, things become more difficult if we had the future without Steph. But it's the same mission. We are trying to keep this thing that will win as many games as possible.”
The reality is there, and it starts with Curry probably on the bench for Thursday's match, instead of returning to San Francisco. Kerr will have to further include his attack on Jimmy Butler, capable of great use. Kerr said that when the franchise had acquired Butler on the deadline, the coache staff had examined a lot of butler's film in Miami, where he was an offensive center.
“We will absolutely count on Jimmy as we have done, when Steph has been out of the field in the past two months,” said Kerr. “We are mainly doing everything through Jimmy in these moments, so he will assume more responsibilities. But we cannot count on him. ”
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The defense of Golden State has been at the top of the League since its acquisition of butler, and the Warriors were quite physical with the Timberwolves on the plates of the match 1.. Timberwolves coach, Chris Finch, said that Rudy Gobert had been too noisily and said and said He sent bands to the League as proof.
Kerr is not disagreeing – but with his own warnings.
“Everyone is clinging,” said Kerr. “I just have the impression, they (the referees) have a really difficult job, because basketball of the eliminatory series is, yes, it is physical, and they will allow more, but I think they could have called six, seven consecutive possessions with them keeping Steph. And so I also obtained my complaints. ”
