{"id":588613,"date":"2026-04-06T06:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T06:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/588613\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T06:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T06:55:09","slug":"stephen-curry-puts-up-29-in-return-nearly-hands-warriors-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/588613\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Curry puts up 29 in return, nearly hands Warriors win"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO — Golden State Warriors<\/a> star Stephen Curry<\/a> scored 29 points in 26 minutes Sunday night against the Houston Rockets<\/a>, delivering a loud return performance from a 27-game absence that was missing only the final punctuation point.<\/p>\n

Curry brought the Warriors back from 10 points down in the final five minutes and lined up a game-winning 30-footer at the buzzer, but the jumper missed long and the Warriors lost 117-116<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Looked great when it left his hands,” Rockets forward Kevin Durant<\/a> said. “I was a little nervous seeing that ball in the air.”<\/p>\n

Curry’s night started with a sputter. He volunteered to come off the bench to help manage his minutes and subbed into the game for his brother, Seth Curry<\/a>, with 4:54 left in the first quarter, getting a standing ovation from the crowd. In his first sequence, Curry had a flailing miss and committed a travel violation.<\/p>\n

“First run was rough,” Curry said. “Second run was great.”<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

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Curry played the final six minutes of the second quarter and started to generate a rhythm, scoring seven points.<\/p>\n

In the third quarter, Kerr finally stretched him out, playing Curry the final 7:58 of the quarter. Curry scored 11 points in that stint and another 11 in seven fourth-quarter minutes, finishing with 29 and bumping his minute total a nudge past the initial plan of about 24.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think there’s a tougher defender in the league for him to have his first game against than Amen Thompson<\/a>,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “That’s quite a test. Steph looked amazing.”<\/p>\n

Curry said postgame he expected a similar workload Tuesday night against the Sacramento Kings<\/a>, but acknowledged that the NBA calendar creates urgency.<\/p>\n

There are only four games left in the regular season, and Curry is likely to play in only three of them before the Warriors face a do-or-die elimination game the following week in the play-in tournament against either the LA Clippers<\/a> or Portland Trail Blazers<\/a>. They’ll have to win twice to force their way into the playoffs.<\/p>\n

“Got to be smart and do the right thing for the right reasons,” Curry said. “All I’m looking forward to is Tuesday.”<\/p>\n

Kerr said Curry will enter the starting lineup again at some point in the near future, but the franchise is taking a cautionary approach to an “unpredictable” knee injury that kept him out more than two months after he initially said he thought he’d miss only 7-10 days.<\/p>\n

Curry called the “runner’s knee” — persistent pain and swelling that he must manage — his “new normal,” though he reiterated that there are no structural issues in his right knee and he doesn’t feel compromised.<\/p>\n

The Warriors are 36-42, meaning they’ll finish below .500 for the first time since the 2019-20 season. They are a near certainty to finish as the 10th seed, but believe they can morph back into a playoff threat in the coming days with Curry back in the lineup and veteran center Al Horford<\/a> likely to return from a calf strain by the weekend.<\/p>\n

“You can just feel it,” Kerr said. “We’re back in the mix. We’re back in the fight with Steph. … It doesn’t take much for him to find his rhythm. His rhythm is also our rhythm. … He changes everything.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO — Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry scored 29 points in 26 minutes Sunday night against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-588613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588613","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=588613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}