The Golden State Warriors’ season ended after losing to the Minnesota Timberwolves 121-110 in Game 5 of their Western Conference Semifinal series. Stephen Curry missed the final four games of the series after suffering a hamstring injury in Game 1, and he opened up about the brutal playoff exit.
Stephen Curry Talks Playoff Exit, Says Warriors ‘Had a Chance’
Golden State finished the regular season with a 48-34 record and secured the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference after beating the Memphis Grizzlies in the Play-In Tournament. The team fought through a tough seven-game series against the Houston Rockets, as Curry led the team, averaging 24.0 points per game.
The Warriors proved they were still a team to be reckoned with despite their low seed, and they geared up for the Timberwolves in the second round. Golden State won Game 1 99-88, but lost Curry in the first half to a hamstring injury.
The 11-time All-Star had 13 points in just 13 minutes and made three of six three-point shots. Jimmy Butler and the rest of the team closed out the game, but the Warriors lost a lot of juice without Curry.
Curry missed the rest of the series with a Grade 1 hamstring strain, but was likely to play in Game 6, had the series gone that far. He, like others within the organization, was confident Golden State could have advanced had he been able to play. Anthony Slater and Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic recently wrote a piece about Golden State’s early playoff exit.
In the piece, Curry said, “The only solace you can really take was that we had a chance. It’s kind of the ultimate gut-punch because of that. Makes it worse. You just don’t want to go out like that.”
The Athletic also spoke to Warriors’ controlling owner Joe Lacob: “Disappointing,” Lacob said, settling into a 10-minute conversation with The Athletic. “I really hoped we could extend the series and I’m …” This is where he paused, understanding his next statement would come off as a discredit to the Timberwolves, but he fired it off anyway. “I am pretty positive that if we had Steph, we’d have won this series,” Lacob said.
The article went on to say that the team isn’t planning a major shake-up after the second-round exit. Curry, Draymond Green, and the recently added Jimmy Butler make up the team’s veteran core. Slater and Thompson wrote, “They’re plotting a retooled middle of the rotation below Curry, Jimmy Butler and Green, still believing that veteran core can contend.”
Curry made it clear he’s gutted by the loss and feels things would have gone differently if he were on the floor. Golden State’s veteran core has 43 years of combined experiece, so who knows how many more years they have left. It was a good season for the Warriors, but certainly wasn’t the ending they hoped for.
