MIAMI — No matter how much added motivation he had to return to support his new teammate, Jimmy Butler, in hostile territory, Steph Curry wasn’t healthy enough to suit up on Tuesday.
Curry, 37, missed his second straight game with a pelvic contusion. He suffered the injury late last week against Toronto after taking a hard fall on a drive. The Warriors (41-30) faced off against Butler’s former team — and former teammate in Andrew Wiggins — without their best player.
The team is optimistic Curry will play on Friday against New Orleans, but are terming him as day-to-day.
“It just wasn’t quite there, and we just can’t risk it,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said.
On Monday, Curry participated in Golden State’s practice at Barry University outside downtown Miami. He also went through a post-practice individual workout that would determine whether he was ready to play against the Heat.
Kerr said that one movement at the very end of his workout “didn’t quite feel right.” The Warriors have two days off — one in Miami and Thursday in New Orleans — before their next game. That would give Curry an entire week of recovery time.
Curry is averaging 24.2 points and six assists per game while leading the NBA in 3s per game. To be eligible for end-of-season awards, he must play five more regular season games.
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The Warriors are 7-4 without Curry this season and are now especially capable of staying afloat without him now that they have Butler.
Golden State acquired Butler from the Heat at the trade deadline after months of drama in Miami. He requested a trade before the team slapped him with three suspensions.
Butler, a six-time All-Star, led the Heat to three Eastern Conference Finals and two NBA Finals berths. He has downplayed the significance of what it means to return to the Kaseya Center, where a tribute video is expected to play after the Warriors’ pregame introductions.
Still, given how much Butler meant to the franchise and how ugly the divorce ended, the atmosphere will be emotional.
“When we get past all of this, I said this the other night: this league is a league of change,” Butler’s former head coach Erik Spoelstra said. “This is a league of emotion. You get past it. Years beyond, you look back at this chapter — that’s what it was, it was a five-and-a-half year chapter. That’s equivalent to when Pat (Riley) was coaching with the Lakers probably like a 10-year chapter. It’s a transient league now. That was a pretty long chapter. There were a lot of different highs and lows with that, but I’ll look back on it fondly.”
