Stephen Curry isn’t sure how long it will take him to bounce back from his Grade 1 left hamstring strain, mainly because this is the first time he’s ever had to deal with this kind of injury.
Curry admitted he has to take things slow, since hamstring issues can be unpredictable.
“This is new, and from all that I’m learning about how quickly you can get back, there has to be a healing process,” he said during Thursday. “You can’t accelerate it more than what it’s telling you. So it’ll be one of those, after a week, really reevaluating every day to understand when it’s safe just to even think about playing, let alone how much can you push it.”
Curry will be sidelined at least through Game 4 on Monday and will be rechecked after that. Game 5 is Wednesday, and if there’s a Game 6, the three-day break beforehand could give him about 12 days total to recover.
He didn’t feel any warning signs before the injury happened in Game 1’s second quarter. He grabbed his left leg and signaled to the bench but stayed in for another 29 seconds before they stopped play.
“I felt great the whole game up until that point,” Curry said. “And then I made a little pivot move on defense and felt something, didn’t think it was nothing or anything. I felt like I could just go get it released and be able to come back out. But with soft tissue, stuff like that, it was one of those situations I could have done more damage if I tried to go back out. So obviously a tough break, but hopefully I’ll be back soon.”
Now at 37 years of age, sitting out hits differently than it used to.
“Fight through the last two months of the season, a hard first round that you get through a Game 7,” he said. “The way that we were playing, and I was playing individually, that first half, I was starting to feel really, really good about where we were at, and then you kind of get a gut punch like that. So it was really emotional at first.”
Asked if he might feel tempted to rush back early just to help his team, Curry was honest.
“There will eventually be conversations like that,” he said. “I’m not even anywhere close to that right now, so I’m not rushing it because there has to be a natural healing process that happens and the body will tell you even if you’re able to do normal basketball movements, pain-free and all that stuff.
“And I know how tricky hamstrings can be where they can fool you and think that it’s healed even if you don’t feel anything. And so that gray area is a little, will be confusing I’m sure, but I’ll do everything in my power to get back as soon as possible.”
