The most meaningful player in franchise history slammed his hands together once, twice, then shouted into the air. It almost looked like he was angry. It definitely looked like he was acknowledging all that was almost lost in this moment, this season, this twilight stage of a dynasty.
This wasn’t a celebration for Stephen Curry on Tuesday, when Chase Center roared after the Warriors finally clinched a spot in the first round of the playoffs with a play-in victory over Memphis. It was a release. It was a gasp and it was a catharsis as the final buzzer sounded.
The Warriors found a way to play meaningful basketball again. It starts Sunday in Houston. Curry will be there, with fellow future Hall of Famers Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler alongside him. This season still matters. The Curry era still matters.
But none of this was certain only a few months ago, when the Warriors were stumbling around the .500 mark. It actually wasn’t so certain even for a few minutes in the third quarter on Tuesday, when the Warriors kicked away a 20-point lead and were in jeopardy of a loss that would’ve sent them to an exhausting do-or-die play-in game on Friday.
They survived. Curry, who scored the Warriors’ final 10 points, absorbed it and, at last, exulted. The Warriors are officially the Western Conference’s No. 7 seed, which doesn’t seem so glorious for a team that won four championships in the last 11 years — but at least they’re still playing.
“You appreciate the moments,” Curry said late Tuesday. “That’s why we’ve been talking about this game for the last two months, how important it is to play meaningful games. And now we have a series that’s going to be full of meaningful ones.”
The Warriors are the betting favorites but assuredly won’t have an easy time against the No. 2 seed Rockets, a young and incredibly athletic team that came to Chase last week and spun the Warriors in circles. The Warriors might look very, very old in this series.
But they’ve got Curry, Draymond, and Steve Kerr, who’ve won more than their share of tricky playoff chess matches. And now they’ve got Butler, who changed the season when he arrived via trade in February. So yes, Curry was determined not to let this chance pass by. Yes, he was on top of his teammates on this night, even Draymond.
“It was even more special for me to see because when I shot that three in the corner [a miss with 2:48 left], he very nicely told me that it wasn’t time for me to shoot,” Draymond said with a smile.
The Curry signal
If Curry signals loud and clear that this is an urgent moment, how can his teammates ignore it, right? He absolutely did signal it, and his teammates absolutely understood what that meant.
I mean, who knows how many times this core group of Warriors will have a shot like this?
Kerr originally planned to stick to the Warriors’ regular day-of-game routine to keep the veterans as rested as possible — no morning shootaround. But then he got a request from Curry: Let’s have a shootaround to get everybody, especially the younger players, locked into the game plan and into the seriousness of the situation. Curry was thinking about the inexplicable home loss to San Antonio last week, then the spirited regular-season finale loss to the Clippers that sent the Warriors to the play-in.
So the Warriors held a shootaround. They locked in the game plan. And Moses Moody, Brandin Podziemski, and Quentin Post all played with razor sharpness.
“A lot of guys haven’t been here [on the brink of the playoffs] — and the physical demand is one thing, but the mental capacity to be able to lock into a game plan, trust that you’re prepared on the same page no matter who you’re out there on the floor with, there’s a sense of urgency around that,” Curry said.
“We gave ourselves a good chance to do it in 82 [games], like I said. Didn’t happen. To get this one sealed up and have five days [between games] is big for us, and we’ve got to take full advantage of it.”
A responsibility fulfilled
Will Curry and the rest of the Warriors feel freed up now that they’ve gotten through all the preliminaries and are back in the playoffs? Maybe some of the tension is gone now. Maybe some of the responsibility to justify the Butler trade and continue Curry’s run has been lifted. And there’s no doubt that some of Curry’s burden, too, has been eased just by having Butler next to him.
“Hell, I think any team has a chance when I’m on the team,” Butler said. “But I know that every team has a chance if Steph is on the team.”
Butler said he knew right away that the Warriors were making the playoffs once the trade was made. When did Curry know that this team would make the postseason?
“That first game in Chicago [after Butler’s arrival], everything felt pretty natural and there was a smooth transition of what our team looked like post-trade, and that was a great feeling,” Curry said. “And we just kept that rolling. …
“You know, winning produces more confidence and more energy, and we’ve been riding that wave for the last two months, even when we’ve had some slip-ups. Like the San Antonio game, the Houston game, like nobody panicked. We knew we didn’t play our best. But nobody was panicking or feeling like we didn’t have what it takes to — it sounds crazy to be a 7-seed, but that seemed like a long way away two months ago.”
On Tuesday, Butler and Curry combined for 75 points (Curry had 37 and Butler 38) and 31 of the Warriors’ 34 free-throw attempts. They can lean on each other or they can carry the team separately for stretches. They can share the responsibility, along with Draymond on the defensive side. If you want to stop the Warriors, you have to stop them all.
Butler — who joked that he was a very happy Robin to Curry’s Batman — has gone out of his way to emphasize that Curry is the historic figure here. Butler saved this season, but Curry saved this entire franchise and changed the way the game is played.
“I want everybody to be happy — for sure Steph, he deserves it, what he’s done for, hell, the game of basketball, not only this city and this organization,” Butler said. “He’s in it for the long haul. He wants to win every single game, every single possession. And I know I want to win a championship. So he needs his — what, this will be No. 5 for him? So he needs one more.”
Curry sure has a chance at it now. That’s all he wanted. That’s all everybody associated with the Warriors wanted. It’s what they feared was slipping away, and it’s here now, again, the fulfillment of his wish and demand.
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