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Kurtenbach: Steph Curry is injured (again), and I don't trust the Warriors to survive his absence

Dieter Kurtenbach, Bay Area News Group on

Published in Basketball

It keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?

The Warriors were set to go on a long-awaited run of wins — Saturday night was supposed to be the start of it.

Instead, the win over the Mavericks might be the end of the Dubs’ title defense. The loss of Steph Curry in that contest was infinitely more significant than one win.

The injury, suffered in the third quarter when Curry’s left knee bumped into the right knee of Dallas’ McKinley Wright, is expected to keep Curry out for multiple weeks, per Stadium’s Shams Charania.

With the NBA’s All-Star break coming, that could limit the number of games Curry will be sidelined. But it still puts the Warriors in a terrible spot heading into the home stretch of the season.

The injury is expected to be to Curry’s MCL. He sprained the same ligament in March 2018 and missed five weeks. That amounted to 16 games — including six playoff games.

 

That Warriors team was fine without Curry.

But that Warriors team had Kevin Durant, a pre-injury Klay Thompson, and prime Draymond Green.

This season’s Warriors couldn’t be further away from “ruining the league.” No, they’re a persistently .500 team that’s dependent on Curry’s greatness like it’s the Mark Jackson era.

The Warriors’ title chances depend, entirely, on how long Curry is sidelined. He will unquestionably miss the team’s five remaining games before the All-Star break. If he misses five weeks again, it will likely be 15 games missed.

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