Warriors’ Curry details his ‘new normal’ after ‘unpredictable’ knee rehab

SAN FRANCISCO — In a lengthy news conference Saturday in advance of his return Sunday night, Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry detailed the persistent and “unpredictable” right knee injury that has kept him out of the previous 27 games.

“I thought I was going to be out a week,” Curry said. “Ten days max. [But] every time I got on the court or tried to push it in that first month, there was always a reaction. You just knew it wasn’t healing as fast as you thought.”

The pain and swelling in Curry’s right knee initially popped up Jan. 24 during a workout in Minneapolis. He played through it for a few games before leaving the lineup Jan. 30.

Curry has since missed more than two months with what is termed as “runner’s knee,” but he advanced to 5-on-5 scrimmaging this past week and finally received clearance from the medical staff to make his return against the Houston Rockets at home Sunday night.

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He will officially be listed as questionable, but assuming there aren’t unexpected setbacks in the next 24 hours, he is expected to play.

“Every day I wake up, first thing I think is how this [knee] is going to feel,” Curry said. “That’s been a struggle throughout the whole process. Even now. As good as I feel now, I hope it stays that way. It’s just a matter of getting out there and seeing.”

During the absence, Curry turned 38 in mid-March. He has one more season left on his current contract and has talked about wanting to keep his career going past that. He was asked whether this persistent knee injury was something he will need to manage the rest of his playing days.

“Yes and no,” Curry said. “There’s nothing structurally wrong with my knee. So it’s not like I’m compromised out there. It is a new normal, though, if that makes sense.”

Curry said this was a different experience than any of his past ankle, knee or tailbone injuries because there was no defined timeline and he couldn’t push through it or be on the court while it is still in the late stages of healing.

Curry said he first figured he would return in mid-February after the All-Star break. He later wanted to return for a March road trip out East. He also experienced a setback a couple of weeks ago in Atlanta when it had felt as if he was nearing a return.

“You’d start running and doing your normal [rehab] workout,” Curry said, describing the problem. “[Then] toward the end of however long the session was, you’d start to feel the pain creep back in and the next day it’d be awful. Played that song and dance so many times over the last two months.”

Curry returns to a Warriors team that tumbled down the standings without him, going 9-18 in his 27-game absence, planting Golden State as the firm 10th seed in the Western Conference with five games left.

As Curry said, it doesn’t matter much what the Warriors do in their final five regular-season games. They will be in the bottom side of the play-in bracket and will need to win two elimination games on the road against a mix of the Blazers, Clippers and Suns.

If they are able to pull that off, they’d push into the playoffs as the eighth seed and get a first-round series against either the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder or the red-hot San Antonio Spurs.

“Hopefully win two play-in games,” Curry said. “Then we can have another conversation.”

Curry said he never seriously considered shutting himself down for the season, and Warriors coach Steve Kerr reiterated that the franchise never approached him about it.

“He’s the greatest face of a franchise that I’ve ever seen,” Kerr said. “We owe it to our fans to give them the opportunity to watch Steph Curry play basketball this year. And Steph doesn’t even think twice about that. That’s what he wants. That’s what we want. That’s what our fans want. So we’re going to do that.”