Stephen Curry ‘expected to be cleared to return’ vs. Rockets on Sunday after recovery from knee injury
After more than two months out of action, Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry “is expected to be cleared to return” to the floor for Sunday’s matchup with former teammate Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets, according to Shams Charania and Anthony Slater of ESPN.
Curry hasn’t played since Jan. 30, sidelined by lingering pain and swelling in his right knee that has cost him the last 27 games. Sam Amick and Nick Friedell of The Athletic reported Tuesday that Curry was targeting a weekend return after going through his first full practice in months.
“He went through a full practice, but it was very light,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr told reporters. “We didn’t do anything live. He’s gonna scrimmage right now five-on-five. It’s a good step for him.”
With Curry taking more steps as the week wore on, he and the Warriors are now reportedly poised to end an absence that, combined with the loss of All-Star forward Jimmy Butler to a torn right ACL in late January, sent Golden State plummeting down the standings.
With the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player in the lineup this season, the Warriors have gone 23-16, outscoring opponents by 2.5 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with a near-top-five offense, according to Cleaning the Glass. Since his injury, though, they’ve gone 9-18 with the NBA’s fifth-worst offense and eighth-worst defense, plunging from eighth place in the West down to 10th, headed for their third straight trip to the Western Conference’s play-in tournament, and their fourth in the past six seasons. (The Warriors have also lost fifth-year swingman Moses Moody, who was in the midst of a career year, for the remainder of the season to a torn patellar tendon.)
(Ezra Shaw via Getty Images)
The Warriors have five games left before the end of the regular season: three at home, against the Rockets, Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Lakers, before finishing on the road against the Kings and Los Angeles Clippers. (The home finale against the Lakers and the road game in Sacramento are a back-to-back; it’s unlikely Curry will play both ends of that as he works his way back into form.) They enter Friday’s action at 36-41, three games behind the ninth-place Clippers.
It’s still mathematically possible for Golden State to leapfrog the Clips, but the overwhelming likelihood is Kerr’s club will need to win two play-in games on the road just to earn the right to advance to the postseason proper as the No. 8 seed in an opening-round series against whichever Western power finishes atop the conference. The defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder hold a two-game lead over the San Antonio Spurs with five games remaining.
Even with Curry back, the Warriors would be a sizable underdog against the West’s top seed. But according to Slater and Charania, the 38-year-old “has remained motivated behind the scenes to work his way back and return in time to give the franchise a boost in spirit to close out a turbulent season, even if championship hopes are unrealistic.”
“Just compete. That’s the job,” Kerr told Amick of The Athletic earlier this week. “And Steph’s in the final stages of his career. If he has a chance to be in the playoffs, he’s gonna want to [compete], and our group’s gonna wanna too.”
Prior to his injury, Curry was continuing to produce like one of the best offensive players in the world, averaging 27.2 points and 4.8 assists in 31.3 minutes per game, shooting 58% on 2-pointers, 39% on 3-pointers and 93% from the free-throw line — numbers that earned him his 12th All-Star nod, and very well might have resulted in a 12th All-NBA selection, had he played enough games to qualify for the honor.
(For the season, Curry’s 29th in the NBA in total made 3-pointers — despite appearing in only 39 games. This is also the ninth time in his career that he’s posted a usage rate north of 30% and a true shooting percentage north of 60% — tied with LeBron James for the most such seasons in NBA history.)
Curry’s return would also give Golden State brass a chance to see how he meshes with newcomer big man Kristaps Porziņġis, and how the team looks with them both on the court. They’ve yet to suit up together since the 7-foot-3 Latvian joined the squad at February’s 2025 NBA trade deadline; with Porziņġis set to hit unrestricted free agency after the season, even a small sample of shared floor time could help inform the organization’s path forward this summer, when it reportedly intends to make yet another run at major additions to fortify the roster around longtime franchise centerpiece Curry.
“That will be crazy,” Warriors forward Gui Santos recently told Friedell of The Athletic. “You’ve got Porziņģis, who can do whatever he wants in the paint. You’ve got Steph, who can do whatever he wants in the whole court. So, a pick-and-roll between both, I don’t know who can guard that. That’s going to be really, really interesting to watch the next couple games.”