Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry is expected to be sidelined for closer to a month with the oblique abdominal tear he suffered Wednesday night in Houston, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Thursday. That is well beyond the two-week window the team set out when it announced the MRI result on Thursday morning.
Charania said on ESPN’s “NBA Today” that he has been told Curry will be out closer to one month, and that the Warriors are bracing for a double-digit number of missed games. He said the team’s own 14-day checkpoint is when it will get a clearer read on whether the rehab stretches to three weeks, four weeks or beyond.
Curry exited Toyota Center with 6:25 remaining in the first quarter after grabbing his right side, and he did not return in the Warriors’ 115-108 loss to the Houston Rockets. He underwent an MRI that night, and the team said Thursday that the scan confirmed an oblique abdominal tear and that he will be re-evaluated in two weeks.
Speaking after the game, before any imaging results were available, Steve Kerr said Curry had told him he tweaked something in his abdominal area and had never done it before. Kerr put the team’s concern level high while saying he had no idea of the extent of the injury.
The Team’s Own Timeline Is Already the Floor, Not the Ceiling
The Warriors’ public language — re-evaluation in two weeks — is a standard, conservative placeholder, and Charania’s sourcing points to an organization privately expecting something closer to a month. That gap is the story, because a two-week absence and a month-long one ask very different things of this roster.
Curry, 38, had been the central figure in an 8-4 start built on an eight-game winning streak that followed an 0-3 opening. Golden State is 1-1 this season in the two games he has missed outright, a sample far too small to say how the offense holds up over a stretch this long.
The Next Checkpoint Lands Around Nov. 26
The two-week re-evaluation window runs out roughly two weeks from the Nov. 12 announcement, putting the next formal update around Nov. 26. Nothing beyond that has been set, since the team said the follow-up exam — not a fixed return date — will determine how much further rehab Curry needs.
Sources: Golden State Warriors (team announcement), Shams Charania (ESPN)
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