The Golden State Warriors entered the playoffs as the very heavy favorites to win the NBA championship after having an historic regular season. It has been unanimous among basketball watchers that the only thing that can bring this team down is an injury to a key player. Well, Stephen Curry injured his knee and will miss about two weeks.
Without Curry in game five, the Warriors still blew out the Houston Rockets to close out the series. This Warriors team is one of the best of all time with Curry, but they are still pretty darn good without him. Golden State will now move on to face the winner of the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers series, and they remain confident.
Before closing out the series Wednesday night, Draymond Green said that the team won't sulk without Curry and that their confidence is still up. He described the teams confidence level as "through the roof" with Curry, but without him, that confidence level is "still at the roof".
This Warriors team has every reason to be confident considering Curry was barely available in that first-round series, yet they still got throught it pretty easily. Golden State is helped by the fact that the Clippers lost both Chris Paul and Blake Griffin for the rest of the postseason because if those two were fully healthy, the Clippers would have been a formidable second-round opponent, especially without Curry. Now, they will likely take on the Blazers, who are a young, talented team, but nobody really expects that to be much of a series regardless of how much time the soon to be two-time MVP misses.
This Warriors team is unlike any other in that they can lose the MVP of the league and fill-in with really good players. The depth on this team is insane, and it's not like Curry is their only star, as Klay Thompson and Green also fit that description. Curry is the NBA MVP, but everyone on the Warriors knows that without Green, this team wouldn't be the same. In his Coach of the Year speech, Steve Kerr called Green the "heartbeat" of the team, and it's impossible to argue that.
While the Warriors may have to go through at least part of their next series without Curry, something they are clearly confident that they can handle, there has been some good news regarding their injured point guard. Curry is reportedly feeling much better already and is expected to start testing the injured knee on the court some time this week. The Warriors know that they can likely make it to the Western Conference Finals without Curry, but in order to win their second straight NBA title, they need Curry healthy and it seems like the news is quite good on that front.
