Warriors will be without Stephen Curry for at least 10 more days, but at this point does it really matter?

It's hard to give up on a Stephen Curry team. When this season started, the Warriors were regarded by many as at least a fringe contender in the Western Conference. It was a supportable position to take on a team that had gone 23-7 down the stretch of the 2024-25 season with Jimmy Butler in the lineup and may have been headed to the conference finals were it not for Curry's hamstring injury in Game 1 of the second-round series vs. Minnesota. 

But there was some wishful thinking. That this team, the second-oldest in the league by average age next to the pre-trade deadline Clippers, could stay healthy for a full season and playoff run was likely always a long shot. 

Al Horford was almost invisible through Christmas as he battled sciatica. DeAnthony Melton didn't play until December. With the big three of Curry, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green mostly available, Golden State was only 24-19 on Jan. 19. 

Believers told themselves that the early schedule was brutal and the 12-4 record over the previous month was a sign of things to come. Then Butler tore his ACL. Curry only lasted five more games before he went out with patella-femoral pain syndrome, "runner's knee" to the layman, which has kept him out for the last 10 games. And now the Warriors are reporting he's going to be out for at least five more. 

The Warriors have somewhat treaded water without Curry (4-6 over these last 10 with a couple surprising wins over Phoenix and Denver) and are unlikely to fall into the lottery. But they would like to stay in their current No. 8 spot, which would give them two shots to win one play-in game and at least get into the playoffs (they're currently -5000 to make the play-in tournament, per BetMGM).

That could end up getting tight. The Warriors are only up two losses on the Clippers. And who do they play on Monday? The Clippers. Curry won't be playing. Neither will Kristaps Porzingis, who of course is the player the Warriors have to show for the end of the Jonathan Kuminga saga. 

When the Kuminga trade finally went down, the sunshine sell on Porzingis was that he was the type of player the Warriors had long coveted but never actually had in the Curry era, a stretch five who could protect the rim and legitimately shoot out to 30 feet if he could get, and stay, healthy. 

It was a big if for a guy who had begun battling a mystery illness, which was eventually identified as Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), during his last year in Boston, when he managed just 42 games. Before the Warriors traded for him this year, he had played in just 17 games for the Hawks. 

He made it one game with Golden State before going right back on sick leave. Steve Kerr was asked last week about Porzingis' health and whether what he's dealing with now is also POTS, and said the Hawks, as part of the pre-trade information gathering, told him Porzingis never had POTS to begin with. 

"I read about the POTS diagnosis and called the Hawks [general manager] Onsi Saleh," Kerr said on Bay Area radio. "He's a good friend of mine and I said 'Is this POTS story real?' He said it's actually not POTS. That was some misinformation that was out there."

This was quite the curveball considering how long it took for a diagnosis to come to light as Porzingis was missing more and more time with a condition nobody seemed able to figure out. So if it's not POTS and it never was POTS, then what is it?

Well, it didn't take Kerr long to walk that comment back. 

"It was a stupid mistake by me to talk about something I'm not qualified to talk about," Kerr said Saturday when asked about his radio comments. "Even trying to discuss the diagnosis, that was a mistake. I need to leave that to professionals."

As far as this season is concerned, whether Porzingis returns or not, or if he's in and out the rest of the way, is of little consequence. The Warriors aren't going anywhere anyway. Any chance of factoring in to even the outskirts of the contention conversation ended the second Butler went down. But as the clock ticks on the possibility, however slim, of putting one last run together with Curry, next year is still of concern. 

Porzingis will be a free agent this summer. Do the Warriors re-sign a guy who can't stay healthy? If not, there is the thought that they could move him in a sign and trade, but he can't have much, if any, value at this point. If he simply walks, they just gave up Kuminga, after all that time clinging to the hope of him as a possible future franchise player, for nothing. 

The salt in the wound could be Kuminga thriving in Atlanta, where he's gotten off to a sensational start. It's a small sample (three games, two of them coming against the Wizards), but so far Kuminga is averaging better than 21 PPG on 68/56 shooting splits and the Hawks are plus-59 in his 80 minutes. Stay tuned on that story. 

But as far as the Warriors, a season that started out on thin ice has officially fallen through. They're a hard team to watch right now. When Curry comes back, at least the entertainment value will rise, but that's a tough watch in its own right. To see a player who is still so great (27.2 PPG this year) with no chance to win is frustrating. 

Nobody should be completely closing the book on the Curry era just yet. The Warriors can come up with as many as five first-round draft picks to trade this summer. There is still a way to put a major player alongside Curry and Butler for one last run. 

But that requires you to look through some pretty rose-colored glasses. If any player is worth doing that for, it's Curry. But at some point, even he won't be able to fend off the end, if it hasn't come already.