First they said two weeks. Minutes later, Shams Charania stretched the bad news to a month
In the best-case scenario, and assuming the most optimistic timeline holds, Stephen Curry will be back for the 28 November game at the Trail Blazers.
That is a window of between six and nine games in which the Golden State Warriors will have to cope without their most game-changing player, who had also been the league’s second-highest scorer (yesterday, after playing just six minutes in Houston but still counting as a game played, he drops to fourth overall).
Just in on NBA Today — Golden State star Stephen Curry expected to miss close to one month: https://t.co/hRYgkq9kM3
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) November 12, 2026
So, like it or not, the Bay Area side have an apparently runaway Curry dependency. Because when your second offensive option is a rookie (Lendeborg’s 21.7 points) who is going to be eaten alive once the gravity Curry generates disappears, and your third is a Brandin Podziemski whose extension has looked too big for him from day one – that is my personal opinion – the need for “what ifs” shoots up.
What if Pod takes the reins and shows he deserves that $22 million a year? What if Draymond Green starts to look like the player he was six seasons ago? What if the nearly 30 points Curry scores per night are shared out successfully and evenly among the members of a rotation that still doesn’t have Jimmy Butler to carry the load?
More of a team than they appear
Plenty of question marks, though they come with a counterpoint that tempers the gloom. Because in a squad with barely any big names, the lesser-known players shine in the shadows.
And we will give three facts that back this up:
- The first is that Curry, despite his absolute leadership in the raw numbers (he not only averages close to 30 points, but his shooting efficiency, with a 71.9% True Shooting, is sensational), is reduced in the advanced stats to a VORP (Value Over Replacement) of 1.1, the worst of his career.
That means the scoreboard barely notices the difference between having Curry on and off the court in raw terms.
- The second is that the Warriors boast the league’s second-best bench. 21 minutes per game, 45 points generated and a +14.5 differential. It rebounds well, steals the ball and blocks shots as well as anyone. All of this makes it the most efficient bench rotation in the NBA.
- Curry is averaging fewer minutes than ever, not even reaching 28 minutes.
But of course, this comes with a thousand and one caveats. The most important is that Curry bears the wear and tear of facing the opposition’s starting five, while the GSW reserves mostly match up against their second units.
Even so, what Steve Kerr is achieving with a run-of-the-mill squad – apart from the greatest shooter of all time, unfazed by the passage of time – and one that has been unable to field either Kristaps Porzingis or Jimmy Butler, deserves, at the very least, the benefit of the doubt.
The schedule brings a bit of everything: Spurs, NOLA, Mavericks, Grizzlies, Celtics and Kings, starting tomorrow with a four-game road trip. Then, if the month-long absence is confirmed, come the Blazers, Jazz and Utah, benefiting from a break with no games between 2 and 13 December.
And to prove that Curry’s absence does not turn them into cannon fodder, there are Melton, Niang, Santos, Horford, Williams, Bassey and Payton II. An extremely solid and balanced team when the point guard is in the picture, and one that must now show it can also hold up when you remove its main load-bearing wall.
Curry ‘leaves them’ in the playoffs
The Warriors are 1-2 without Curry (counting last night’s loss to the Rockets “without him”, as he barely played six minutes).
But their run of eight straight wins, after losing the first three games of the season, briefly brought them within touching distance of top spot in the West. They are now 8-4 and sixth in the West.
We will be back in two weeks to take stock. We will see whether they, too, send in the bill.
(Cover photo by D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images)
