The Golden State Warriors finally have provided a reason for its fans to feel a little of the angst every other fan base lives with daily, and it can thank Stephen Curry’s massive ankle.
If “thank” is the word you’re looking for here. And if “angst” is the right word to apply.
Curry rolled the ankle Monday night on E’Twaun Moore’s foot during Golden State’s 125-115 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, bringing back fears of the days when Curry’s ankles were made of corn chips.
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Those days, we can safely conclude, are probably well done, but he will miss at least the next two weeks of play, taking him through the Memphis game on December 20 and maybe through the holidays – including the soon-to-be-revoltingly-overhyped game against Cleveland on Christmas Day.
And the news will surely cause Warrior fans to start wondering if the gold veneer is off the gold bar, when in fact it probably isn’t.
The Warriors have too many roster toys, and losing Curry may well mean they have just enough for awhile. And while he is seminal to their narrative as The Team That Can’t Be Punished, he probably isn’t The Little Engine That Blows Up The Railroad.
It means adjustments (Patrick McCaw here, Shaun Livingston there, a bit more Kevin Durant with a little less margin for error, a greater interest in protecting the basketball and a little less interest in hectoring the officials), but it should not mean a freefall down the Western Conference table.
After all, that’s what the Durant signing was all about 17 months ago – to give the Warriors depth that could crush all opposition and allow them their little possession peccadilloes.
What they will lose, however, is a bit of whimsical entertainment powered by the runs when his shot always fell and his opponents fell to the ground in laundry heaps. They will be less fun. And they will be less great because Curry matters, a lot.
But his wayward foot doesn’t finish the season the way LeBron James would if he was lost to Cleveland for an extended period of time, or the way Washington has suffered without John Wall.
At least it shouldn’t.
At least it better not, lest all the stories about their invulnerability and crystalline perfection be reduced to word shards and sentence shrapnel. This is supposed to prove how good the Warriors are, not how fragile they are.
But if Durant, or Draymond Green, or Klay Thompson goes down in Curry’s interim, we will revisit. We’ll pretty much have to.