Stephen Curry sat dejected in front of his locker Wednesday night, shirtless and with his right foot soaking in a tub of ice water. The unhappy look on his face wasn’t a product of the game’s result -- a 106-104 victory for his Warriors over the Suns in Phoenix. It was due to the fact that he was bitten by the injury bug once again.
Curry suffered what the team is calling a strained tendon in his right foot during the first quarter. He came out of the game with a little more than two minutes remaining in the first, following an awkward landing off of a reverse layup attempt on a fast break.
“It’s just something different,” Curry said with a bit of disbelief, while trying to describe the injury afterward. “They haven’t figured out if it’s my tendon or my plantar fascia yet, but it’s on the other side so it’s not my ankle, which is good.”
Curry has struggled with a recurring ankle injury in his young career, and has already missed nine games this season because of it. He did try to come back in near the end of the first half to see if he could go, but he just wasn’t feeling it.
“I tried to make a cut, but it didn’t respond they way I thought it would,” Curry said. “Coach made the decision in the second half just to let it rest.”
Warriors head coach Mark Jackson said that he didn’t see the need to force the issue.
“I’m not an expert, but the right thing to do was to shut it down and make sure that he takes advantage of the rest that we have moving forward, and get the proper treatment or whatever the doctors say,” he said.
Curry is scheduled to participate in the Skills Challenge as part of the NBA’s All-Star weekend, an event he won last year in Los Angeles. But obviously, his health for the duration of the regular season grind will have to be considered first.
“I’m going to have a discussion on it, it’s unfamiliar territory for all of us,” he said. “We’ll figure out what we’re going to do with the break and getting treatment and all that. I haven’t made a decision yet.”
At this point, Curry’s status for All-Star weekend can be seen as questionable at best. And whether it turns out to be a plantar fascia issue or not, the league might want to start lining up a possible replacement.