Kerr on Curry’s 38-point night: “Nobody has ever tilted the floor the way Steph does.” pic.twitter.com/ds0aLKVSGu
— KNBR (@KNBR) December 31, 2017
OAKLAND–The Warriors went 9-2 in Steph Curry’s absence, but that doesn’t mean Curry’s presence wasn’t missed.
Though Golden State still has a roster full of winners, no player changes the game quite like Curry, who poured in 38 points on 13-of-17 from the floor on Saturday evening in his first game in more than three weeks. After suffering an ankle injury on December 4 in New Orleans, Curry missed an extended stretch and was forced to watch the Warriors turn into a grind-it-out defensive minded team as he loomed from the sidelines.
Against the Memphis Grizzlies, Curry finally had his chance to roam the playground freely, and the Warriors’ star took full advantage of the opportunity. Curry drilled a season-high 10 three-pointers on 13 attempts from beyond the arc, drilling a wide array of shots that brought fans at Oracle Arena to their feet all night long.
“He brings something different than anybody ever has, to be honest with you,” Kerr said. “There are plenty of guys who dominated the game in different ways, you think of Shaq overpowering people or Michael Jordan, a combination of power and skill and tenacity, but nobody has ever tilted the floor like Steph does at such a deep range, and with such incredible ball-handling skills.”
The Warriors defeated the Grizzlies 141-128, as Curry racked nearly racked up 40 points in just 26 minutes of work. Even though Kerr and the Warriors’ training staff were monitoring Curry’s ankle closely, it hardly mattered as the Warriors’ point guard took advantage of every second he spent on the floor.
“It’s crazy what he does to the defense,” Kerr said. “As a coach you try to come up with a scheme to force the ball and shrink the floor and you’ve got all of these expressions and Steph kind of blows all of that stuff out of the water. Schemes kind of go awry when Steph is on the floor because it’s hard to account for 35 feet of perimeter space rather than 25 like most people. I don’t remember anybody ever impacting the way that Steph does in that regard.”
In the midst of a long homestand, the energy inside Oracle Arena has dwindled as fans watched an always-entertaining Warriors team struggle on the offensive end of the floor and lose a pair of games, including one on Friday night to the Charlotte Hornets.
With Curry back in action on Saturday, the Warriors’ fan base felt a different sense of energy, and Kerr admitted his team did as well. The return of Curry made the Warriors the most feared team on the planet again, and with their sharpshooting star knocking down bucket after bucket, Golden State finally got its swagger back.
“Then you add just the entertainment value, you could hear the building and you know, everything just looks better, the food in there is going to taste better, my wife is going to be even better looking than she is, my kids are going to be happy, Steph just has that impact and it’s just the way it is,” Kerr said. “He’s a franchise player for a reason and it goes on and off the court what he does for this franchise is just crazy.”