Bah humbug!
Stephen Curry hasn’t played for the Golden State Warriors since Dec. 4 while dealing with a sprained ankle, and though his recovery is moving along as expected, he has officially been ruled out of the team’s Christmas Day date with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Golden State announced the news on Monday night, and ESPN.com relayed some additional information with reporting from Ramona Shelburne:
Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry won’t play in the team’s Christmas Day game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, as he continues to recover from a sprained ankle.
On Tuesday, the Warriors announced that Curry’s injury had been re-evaluated, and while he’s progressing, the team won’t evaluate him again until next week. That timetable rules Curry out for Monday’s NBA Finals rematch against the Cavs.
This sucks for obvious reasons. The Cavs-Dubs Christmas Day Finals rematch has basically become an annual affair. It serves as a barometer for where both teams are relative one another and just generally makes for good television.
As far as the Warriors’ long-term outlook goes, this doesn’t adversely impact them in any way. They would of course prefer to have Curry on the court, but they’re 5-0 in his absence with the NBA’s best defensive rating, according to NBA.com. Oh, and Draymond Green has missed the last three games as well, so yeah…Golden State is basically invincible.
That’s the luxury of employing so many All-NBA talents and some nice bench depth to boot: Even when your most valuable player, in Curry, goes down, you have the tools to navigate his stay on the sidelines with relative ease.
At the same time, however, screw this. Why can’t we have a full-strength Warriors versus full-strength Cavaliers matchup on Christmas? Nick Young better get off at least 15 three-point attempts in a triple-overtime square dance, lest we all feel gipped.
