The irony of Steph Curry's Warriors return in first game vs T-wolves this season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
One more game, one more day. That’s the thinking that consumed Steph Curry’s mind as he looked to return from a strained left hamstring against the Minnesota Timberwolves last season in the second round of the NBA playoffs. His wishful hope fell short.
Without him, the Warriors lost four straight games after holding the Timberwolves off in Game 1 after Curry left in the second quarter. No extra days together, no more games. No more Curry, no more season.
“Everything was kind of aligned for Game 6,” Curry said at his exit interview press conference when the Warriors returned home.
A wrinkle in the schedule with the Golden State Valkyries’ own playoff run would have given Curry just enough time to recover to try and keep the Warriors’ season alive. The Warriors would have gone three days without playing between Game 5 and Game 6, but that never became reality.
Now, as the Warriors and Timberwolves are set for their first game against each other this season on Friday night at Chase Center since that second-round playoff matchup, another schedule twist gave Curry ample recovery to return from a quad contusion against the team he so badly wanted to keep competing against seven months ago. Since the Warriors didn’t make it to the next round of this season’s NBA Cup, they finally were given a stretch without any games after a previous jam-packed stretch.
The Warriors last played Sunday, giving them a four-day stretch without games. Friday quickly became circled as a return date for Curry, and the Warriors kept him home from their recent three-game road trip so he could stay back and rehab at their facilities. They took Monday and Tuesday off before Curry returned to practice Wednesday and Thursday.
“I’m feeling great, had a good rehab week,” Curry said Thursday.
Watching from the bench for two games and back at home for three, Curry saw how the Warriors went 3-2 without him. He took note of the good and bad. Curry couldn’t ignore the emergence of new Bay Area cult hero Pat Spencer, as well as some major shifts to coach Steve Kerr’s rotations.
How the Warriors responded to Curry’s absence put them one game over .500 with a 13-12 record. The hardest part of their schedule where the start of the season was full of road games and back-to-backs is over. A new test is here, beginning Friday night, where the Warriors have nine more games in 2025 to enter the new year consistently establishing the identity they want to lean on.
“Nobody’s happy with our record. Nobody’s feeling like we’re a day away from being the best team in the league,” Curry said. “But we also know the journey ahead is right there for us.”
Curry will be back on the court, but another who would love revenge from last season’s playoff exit will not. Draymond Green missed the Warriors’ last two practices because of an excused personal reason and won’t play against the Timberwolves. The defensive ace was honest and critical at the end of last season with how Timberwolves forward Julius Randle played against him, averaging 25.2 points, 6.6 rebounds and 7.4 assists per game in the five-game series.
Signing veteran center Al Horford also was supposed to be a resolution to the Timberwolves’ size advantage on the Warriors, but he too won’t be playing against them Friday night. Horford, 39, continues to be hampered by right sciatic nerve irritation and has played in only two of the last nine games.
Outside of Spencer’s shining star, the Warriors added more reinforcements in the two weeks they were without Curry. The Warriors believe they would have been a different team last season if De’Anthony Melton had stayed healthy instead of playing only six games due to requiring ACL surgery. He made his return last Thursday, one year to the date of his surgery.
Curry’s brother, Seth, was signed shortly after Steph’s injury. A handful of other role players contributed to the Warriors’ successful road trip without their superstar. But one with star aspirations who opened eyes against the Timberwolves in last season’s playoffs now appears out of the rotation.
Jonathan Kuminga was a healthy DNP-CD (Did Not Play, Coach’s Decision) against the Chicago Bulls in the Warriors’ blowout win to end the road trip. Kerr said he and Kuminga talked before Wednesday’s practice and the coach is happy with how he responded.
“He had a great practice today. We had a talk before practice and he did the things that I asked him to do and I was thrilled about that,” Kerr said.
Kuminga received two DNPs in the first round against the Houston Rockets, didn’t dress for another game and was also inactive for one after becoming an afterthought in the last month of the regular season. But in the final four games against the Timberwolves, Kuminga averaged 24.3 points on 55.4 percent shooting with a 38.9 3-point percentage.
Warriors owner Joe Lacob, sources say, referred back to Kuminga’s performances against the Timberwolves on multiple occasions throughout the offseason when discussing the former No. 7 overall pick’s future with the franchise and holding onto him, for the time being.
As always, though, everything starts and ends with the health of No. 30.
“At the end of practice today he hit me with like a triple combo and made a rainbow three, if that tells you anything,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said Thursday.
These two teams are on a path of avoiding the play-in tournament already, even with four months remaining in the regular season. A clear top five in the Western Conference of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Lakers has already come to light. The Timberwolves enter Friday as the No. 6 seed, two and a half games ahead of the No. 8 seed Warriors.
So much has changed and so much remains the same since the Warriors’ disappointing end to last season against the Timberwolves. Between Curry’s return, the unknown of Kuminga and all the other moving parts of this roster, the irony of the first Warriors-Timberwolves game this season is hard to miss.
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