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Even if Curry returns at full strength and finds his rhythm before the play-in, chances of the Warriors powering through it toward a playoff push seem bleak at best. Jimmy Butler (torn right ACL) is out for the season, as is Moses Moody (ruptured left patellar tendon), with Al Horford (right calf strain), Quinten Post (right ankle soreness) and Seth Curry (left adductor strain) mired on the sideline, too.<\/p>\n
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![\"Stephen]()
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Stephen Curry (30) and Seth Curry (31) watch the game from the bench with coach Jerry Stackhouse in the second half as the Golden State Warriors played the Los Angeles Clippers at Chase Center in San Francisco, on Monday, March 2, 2026.<\/p>\n
Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
But to Green\u2019s point, there aren\u2019t assurances of a play-in tournament berth next season with Butler and Moody likely due to miss significant chunks amid their recovery. Curry will be 39 when next season\u2019s playoffs roll around and as this season demonstrated, health isn\u2019t certain with age an additional risk factor.<\/p>\n
Put simply: The chance to compete with significant stakes would appeal to Curry.<\/p>\n
Never mind that the Warriors rate as one of the\u00a0NBA\u2019s worst teams without him (23rd offensive rating since Jan. 30, 21st in defensive rating) the past two months. So long as he\u2019s on the court and in the lineup, they\u2019re right to believe he can power them to victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just know he wants to play,\u201d Green said. \u201cHe wants to be out there. \u2026 But I think where you get a little worried and you know he wants to come back and he hasn\u2019t. That\u2019s when you start looking at the clock tick \u2026 not from a standpoint of like, \u2018Yo, when\u2019s he coming back?\u2019 But just like \u2014 I know he\u2019s working to get back, and if not now, then what\u2019s going on? I think you more so get a little worried but not from a standpoint of, \u2018He\u2019s going to save the day.\u2019 (But) from a standpoint of like, \u2018Oh, man. Your brother down. What the hell is going on?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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If a return-to-play comes with unwarranted risk, then Green reaffirmed Curry shouldn\u2019t play \u201cwhether we\u2019re 35-38 or 58-12\u00a0\u2014 if you\u2019re not healthy, got to play the long game.\u201d Should the Warriors miss the playoffs, they\u2019re bound for the NBA\u2019s draft lottery\u00a0\u2014 and with it a chance to inject them with youth (if they keep the pick instead of trading it) in one of the deepest drafts in recent memory.<\/p>\n
With Curry shelved and the Warriors reeling with their second-worst winning percentage under head coach Steve Kerr, Green is proudly bearing the onus of keeping them on track as best he can. His season, too, has been underwhelming (minus-114 in 1,645 minutes for Golden State\u2019s second-worst plus-minus) in accordance with his future Hall of Fame standards, but his personal creed remains intact.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just can\u2019t be the guy that quits when it gets tough,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had some incredible years here. Been a part of some incredible teams. \u2026 When that stuff is happening, you want to be at the forefront of it. You want to embrace it, enjoy it, all those things. It\u2019s great. But when it goes a little left, you can\u2019t jump off the train. You can\u2019t walk around and pout. You can\u2019t throw in the towel\u00a0\u2014 or what was everything you did before?<\/p>\n
\u201c \u2026 I\u2019d rather go in and get my head beat in every night and walk off the court and go home to my family, my kids, wife and I always say\u00a0\u2014 at the end of the day, the day\u2019s going to end. But I can go home knowing, \u2018All right, we won or lost regardless. But no matter the circumstance, I\u2019m going to go out there and give what I can give.\u2019 And with that, I can sleep at night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green (23) during an NBA basketball game, Wednesday, March 18, 2026, in Boston.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,7901,5552,590,85,7903,3198],"class_list":["post-567686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-draymond-green","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-stephen-curry","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}