San Francisco – About 90 minutes before TIP on Saturday evening, the star of the Golden State Warriors, Steph Curry, went through a fairly painful training in the team’s training court in the dungeons of Chase Center. It was the clearest initial stage in what Curry hopes to be an accelerated return of the stump of the hamstrings that came to define this series of second round against the Timberwolves of Minnesota.
Curry did not push it at full speed, according to a team source. He has not yet broken out, cutting or testing that has left the hamstrings in a way that will deliver him as well as Rick Celebrini – the team’s medical range – the real information they will need to find out if the hamstrings are healed enough to return deeper in this series. But he crossed a medium speed shooting routine and rolled the stationary bike. It was a notable advancement for Curry in his race against time.
Ninety minutes later, Curry was dressed in a gray tracksuit on the sidelines, looking at his warriors to fail in their second crack during a victory without him. The Timberwolves won match 3: 102-97. They are up 2-1 in the series. Curry was not officially excluded for match 5, but the internal message following Curry’s injury has always been to obtain this second victory to stretch it after next week’s break, giving Curry a more relaxing and realistic target: match 6 on Sunday.
“If we don’t win, we really don’t have to worry about recovering Steph this year,” said Jimmy Butler. “We have to put our big boy’s pants and go there and compete at a high level and get it on Monday.”
They had a real chance of getting it without curry on Saturday evening. Butler, as expected, has considerably suffocated aggressiveness. He played 43 minutes despite the worsening of his injury to the buttocks and got up 26 shots, six more than he had taken in any previous match with the Warriors and his most excessive attempts on the field since the 28 he won in match 7 of the final of the Eastern Conference of Miami’s heat from the Boston Celtics.
Butler finished with 33 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. The Warriors were preceded by four points within five minutes he rested.
“Dude, Jimmy was incredible,” said Steve Kerr. “He really checked the match for us and put us in the position to win, and we just couldn’t close it. But he was brilliant overnight.”
Butler spent part of his post-match media session after match 2 sending a convincing message that he could adapt on the field with Jonathan Kuminga, despite the small sample at the end of the regular season which made Kerr hesitating to assemble them. Without curry, Kerr was forced to reorganize his rotation, and Kuminga’s offensive talent brought him back from the image.
The fourth year striker responded with the best high lever match of his life, marking 30 points out of 18 shots in 36 minutes of bench which did not even feel enough, given its bidirectional impact. Kuminga blocked a Dunk Jaden McDaniels, struck a Mike Conley 3 corner and supported both Julius Randle and Anthony Edwards – his two defensive assignments – on the half -habit.
“Beautiful view to see,” said Butler. “As I tell everyone, I and he can prosper together. I know how to space the ground. I can say to him: “Hey, when I have the ball, you go here and you do this. We are talking.
Kuminga opened the defense with an early mid -range rider and finished 3 out of 4, but his most important offensive damage came in paint, in transition and on the edge. He aggressive striker Rudy Gobert and Naz Reid in space this series.
“It was fantastic to see,” said Kerr. “You can see how necessary it is in this match, especially without Steph. We have trouble freeing oneself, and it is obviously capable of giving us points, arriving at the rim.”
The last two games looked more like the Kuminga that exploded in January before descending with an ankle injury that prevented it for 31 games. He recognized after the match that he still worries about the landing of this ankle and had trouble regaining his contact and his pace with the sporadic playing time since his return.
“I was just a little nervous on a game,” said Kuminga. “I missed a lay-up that I do not usually miss. It was against Conley. The from top to bottom and a penny, I was nervous.
Kuminga’s resurgence is a major boost next to Butler for a warriors offense that drowns otherwise without curry. These two electric wings combined for 63 of the team’s 97 points. They could only generate 23 attempts by 3S. Buddy Hield struck four of them to provide at least one touch of additional score, but there was almost nothing else.
Brandin Podziemski remains in a deep funk. He missed nine of his 10 shots and now made 6 on 26 shots in this series, not ending inside the length and continuously picking up his short floats.
“If things bounce back in the other direction and we are here with a victory, no one cares that he has not marked much,” Kerr said about Podziemski, who played 40 minutes. “When the game goes in one direction or the other, it is easy to look at different statistics or different things. He is not a big scorer. He’s a basketball player. It does a lot of big things there. I thought he was playing very well tonight. The shots did not go, but I am convinced that they will go to match 4. ”
Moses Moody and Quinten Post received only brief cameos from the first semester and seem likely to be cut entirely from the rotation in match 4. Gary Payton II missed his two 3s. Trayce Jackson-Davis started in the center and collected seven points in 11 minutes, but Kuminga’s solid game maintained its limited short time.
The limited production of Draymond Green and Nauque problems may have been the biggest problem. He committed six faults and five reversals in 29 minutes. His fourth fault occurred on a block or load whistle on Randle in the third quarter. Kerr challenged him and lost. Green was forced to the bench for prolonged stretching.
After his return to the fourth quarter, Green received a fifth fault after the revision when the Minnesota challenged a randle fault on Kuminga and the officials judged that he had seized the Randle shirt before contact. A possession later, during a competition at the RIM, Green was called to a sixth questionable fault on McDaniels and Kerr could not challenge him. Green was disqualified with 4:38 on the left and the Warriors down two. They lost five.
“The sixth was difficult,” Kerr said. “It didn’t feel very well by looking at the replay, but that’s what it is. They surpassed us in the fourth, and they deserved to win.”
The Warriors will rest on Sunday. They will come together on Monday. Then they will have 48 more minutes to help buy more curry time.
(Photo: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
