The Golden State Warriors are dangerously close to falling out of the Play-In tournament and Steve Kerr is keeping Stephen Curry glued to the bench for more than nine straight minutes down the stretch of a tight game against the league’s best defense?
Make it make sense.
“We’re trying to get him as much rest as we can,” Kerr said of Curry following the Warriors’ 114-110 loss at Minnesota on Sunday. “We’ve played him a lot of minutes. We played him 35 [minutes] two days ago. So as long as we were hanging in there, we wanted to limit the minutes a little bit. Not limit them, but not overplay him.”
There’s a big difference between playing Curry 30 total minutes and overplaying him. It’s true, Curry played 35 minutes on Friday in a loss to the Pacers, including the entire fourth quarter, which the Warriors entered with a 14-point deficit. Curry didn’t change much. They lost by 12.
Still, Kerr had to try. With 12 games to play, the Warriors are clinging to a one-game lead in the loss column over the Rockets for the final Play-in spot. Every game is massive. When Curry sat down at the 4:07 mark of the third quarter on Sunday, the Warriors held a four-point lead. When he came back in at the 6:54 mark of the fourth quarter, they were down eight. That’s too big a swing for a team already operating on a razor-thin margin.
“I want to play as many minutes as I’m fresh and able to, so I’m a little bit [surprised] knowing that [the Timberwolves] were going on a run,” Curry said after Sunday’s loss. “Our lead was withering away. … I played the whole fourth quarter against Indiana and it didn’t work out, this didn’t work out [against Minnesota]. We’ve got to find somewhere in the middle.”
Curry obviously wants to play more, but Kerr has made his position clear. In 14 games since the All-Star break, Curry has only played more than 32 minutes twice. He is averaging fewer than 30 minutes a night over nine games in March. He played 17 in a blowout loss to Boston, 24 in a blowout win over Memphis, and just 29 minutes in a brutal loss to the…
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