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NBA

Stephen Curry confident of shaking off sprain before Game 4

Steph Curry suffered a sprain to his left foot in Wednesday’s 116-100 win over the Warriors but says the injury is unlikely to make him miss a game.

Update:
Jun 8, 2022; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) reacts to an apparent injury during the fourth quarter against the Boston Celtics in game three of the 2022 NBA Finals at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports
Winslow TownsonUSA TODAY Sports

There was concern for Stephen Curry following Wednesday’s 116-100 Game 3 defeat to the Celtics. The Warriors guard was seen limping out of TD Garden after colliding with Al Horford late in the game - Horford came down on Curry’s left foot with 4:16 left to play and the Dubs trailing by 12 points on the board. Afterwards, Curry didn’t seem too worried, telling reporters he had a mild sprain: “The same thing I did against Boston in the regular season but not as bad”. Curry scored 31 points on 12-of-22 shooting, including six from the field. He says he expects to be back in top shape for Game 4 at the same venue. “We’ll see how it responds. I got caught underneath Al [Horford],” he explained. “Obviously, there’ll be some pain, but I’ll be all right. I’ll figure how it feels tomorrow and get ready for Friday. I don’t feel as though I’ll miss a game though. I’ll take advantage of the next 48 hours to get ready”.

Boston’s defense held strong in the final quarter, slowing the Warriors down to give them a 2-1 lead in the series. “They had some unforced turnovers in the first couple of possessions. That obviously led to them getting some easy buckets, extending the lead a little bit,” Curry explained. “We settled down a little bit after that and got some good shots. They tried to pay a little bit more attention to our pick and rolls. We could slow down a little bit and try to find the right matchups but their first two or three minutes set the tone for the rest of the fourth and gave them a little bit of a cushion. So between the first three minutes of the fourth and the first 12 minutes of the game, that was pretty much it”.

Center Robert Williams led the Cs with four key blocks, three steals and seven defensive rebounds, denying Curry from inside the paint. “In our gameplan, we’ve talked about being aware of where he is because, especially depending on who he is guarding, he can come out of nowhere. There was a play early in the fourth, I got by Grant Williams and I thought I had daylight to get a shot up and I underestimated how athletic he was and how much he could bother that shot. There are situations where we can use that to our advantage because he’s going to be aggressive, he’s going to keep trying to make plays on the ball. You’ve got to be aware of where he is because that’s what he does for them on that end of the floor,” Curry said.

“We can play a lot better”

Curry reflected on the defeat, and concluded that Boston are almost impossible to stop once they have opened up a sizeable lead. “You want to get off to a better start, because you gotta know that a really good team like Boston is going to feed off the change of venues and come out with a lot of energy and aggression. Jaylen got off to a good start and made some tough shots in the first quarter because we didn’t really press up into his body. And we paid the price for that over the course of the game because we clawed our way back, had a one-point lead at one point in the third quarter. You do all that work to get back into it but we felt we can play a lot better, with that same third quarter intensity where you’re not on your heels for big part of the game - and you don’t have to win the game twice, in a sense. So we gotta correct that if we want to get Game 4,” he said. “I don’t have any comments on how to play. I haven’t really seen it yet, I just know how it felt. The situation is what it is - we’re on the road and it’s a must-win game, Game 4. We had a must-win game after a tough Game 1 and we got Game 2 so we obviously still feel like we can win the series. We’ve been through a little bit of everything during the last eight years and we can draw on that experience to show up when we need to, to stay in the series”.

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