Lowell Cohn: After huge win, Warriors await news on Stephen Curry

HOUSTON - Stephen Curry walks slowly onto the court at the start of the third quarter of Game 4 against the Houston Rockets, walks to the bench and sits down. His teammates are hustling through drills, getting warmed up.

Curry sits alone. Not part of the action.

A few minutes earlier, he had slipped on a wet spot. Happened at the very end of the half. A crazy injury.

Curry was backpedaling on defense when he crossed an area just outside the 3-point arc. Moments before - maybe even just a second - Houston's Donatas Motiejunas had fallen, his sweaty body creating a fateful path. Fate. When Curry planted his right foot on the wet spot it slid, his legs splayed and he fell to the floor. And then he grabbed his right knee.

He rolled and he writhed, pain all over his young handsome face. And maybe you looked at Curry and thought, “Why him again?”

Cut back to the present moment. With about three minutes left in halftime, Curry rises from the bench. He walks with a trainer toward the Warriors basket, toward his teammates. Bouncing on his right leg. Testing it.

Let Steve Kerr pick up the narrative.

“He was kind of gathering his thoughts. We had talked with the doctors about seeing how he felt, trying it out with a little warm-up session. He went out there, tried to move on it. I said, ‘Are you OK?' And he said, ‘Yeah, I'm OK.' And I said, ‘Are you sure? You've got to be honest with us.' And he just put his head down. He knew it was not a wise thing to go out there.

“He was very upset. He had his head buried in his hands. I just feel awful for him. Hopefully, he's going to be OK before too long. We don't know. I just feel so bad for him. He's been healthy all year long and, all of a sudden, the playoffs start and a couple of fluke things.”

Then Draymond Green walked over to Curry. “Sucks but don't force it,” Green said.

Curry walked off the court toward the tunnel that leads to the locker room, walked with a golden towel wrapped around his neck, the saddest walk you ever saw.

The team came together near the bench. The players said to each other, “We're going to do it for Steph.”

A few minutes later the Warriors tweeted, “Stephen Curry suffered a sprained knee and will not return.”

He will have an MRI and the result is anybody's guess.

Green recalled watching Curry walk off the floor, the long lonely walk: “You're feeling like complete crap. The one thing we all hate in life is uncertainty whether that's in a relationship, whether that's in school, whether that's knowing what's being cooked, we all hate uncertainty as humans.

“So, the uncertainty of not knowing what's going on - obviously, he sprained his knee. But that's what we think. That's not what we know until he gets his scan. That sucked and that brings you down. With that, we all know we have to bring our game up. And we know they're thinking, ‘Oh, it's over now.' And we want to come out and prove otherwise.”

The Warriors came out and proved otherwise. In the third quarter, they broke the will of the Rockets and they did it without Stephen Curry. Outscored the Rockets by 21 points. Held them to 20 points. It was a statement quarter and the Warriors made several statements. They can beat the Rockets with Curry or without Curry. They can beat the Rockets in Oakland or in Houston. They can beat the Rockets anywhere and anytime.

The Warriors are a team that rises to big occasions. The Rockets, for all their glamorous talent, are a team that shrivels at big occasions. Listen to their coach, J.B. Bickerstaff, so disheartened after the loss, after losing to the Warriors who didn't have Curry. And listen to his admiration for the Warriors.

“You can see the difference,” he said, “the way they played in that third quarter. They scrapped and they got every loose ball. You could see the intent in their eyes. They knew one of their guys was down and they were going to raise their level of play. The moment we needed to match that intensity we didn't do it.”

What Bickerstaff said was a cry from the heart. He was pleading to have players like Green and Shaun Livingston and Andrew Bogut.

Curry had not played well in the first half. He turned over the ball five times, made several awful passes directly to the Rockets. Couldn't hit his shot. You can't miss time at the elite level and then waltz onto the court and be great even if you are Curry. It must have been hard for him to perform the same movements that always work and now they didn't, must be hard when you're not who you want to be.

“Just couldn't get his rhythm,” Kerr said. “Looked like he was trying to do too much. I didn't mind the shots. He was trying to get himself going with a lot of 3s, which was fine. I thought he was trying to do too much off the dribble. Pressing a little bit.”

Curry had merely tried to belong. Had tried to be Stephen Curry. Wanted things to be normal. Now, normal is an elusive concept.

After the game, he sat alone at his cubicle. The visitors' locker room is tiny, almost claustrophobic, and there was so much swirling action in the confined space, guys showering, guys eating, guys interviewing.

Not Curry. He was there but he wasn't there. A man separated by an injury. Everyone - teammates and reporters - respected his solitude.

He didn't look around the room. He stared at the screen of his cell phone. Texted messages. Lived in phone world. His legs were bare and, on his right knee, someone had wrapped a big white gauze bandage, wrapped it completely around the knee and underneath the knee to support it.

There he was, the great Stephen Curry wrapped and bandaged and silent and out of action.

For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at cohn.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.