Curry faces minutes restriction as Warriors chase must-win play-in vs Clippers
There’s a specific kind of tension that shows up when a team calls a game “must-win” — even if you’re not watching it live. In Los Angeles on Wednesday, the Warriors will walk into that kind of pressure with a plan built around managing bodies, not just matchups.
Stephen Curry is one of three Golden State Warriors who will be on a minutes restriction in the team’s play-in game against the Clippers. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said Sunday that Curry, Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford will all play fewer than 40 minutes in the must-win matchup.
The stakes are immediate. The game is a rematch of Sunday’s regular-season finale, which the Clippers won 115-110. If Golden State loses, a season the team likely would like to forget ends right there — no more “maybe next round,” no second chances. The Warriors clinched the last of four play-in berths at 37-45, which sounds like just a line in a standings table until you remember how close that really is.
Curry’s restriction isn’t coming out of nowhere, and it also isn’t the only injury thread hanging over the roster. He’s been battling knee injuries most of the season. Jimmy Butler tore his ACL in early January, and while that’s obviously its own situation, it changes the rhythm of everything around it. Horford has been dealing with a calf injury, and Draymond Green and Porzingis have both been nursing sore backs. So yeah, this isn’t a team that can afford to let any starter “feel it out” for 42 minutes.
The Warriors have tried to manage the minutes of their aging superstars all season, and the play-in game is no different — maybe even more so. Kerr has been vocal about the league needing a shorter regular-season schedule to prevent the kind of injury cascade that tends to build late in the year. “I know this will not be a popular opinion in the league office, but I will continue to say it because it’s obvious we need to play fewer games — we need to take 10 games off the schedule,” he said in March. “I think it would be a more competitive and healthier league if we played fewer games.”
For the Clippers, it helps that their own final stretch looked different. Kawhi Leonard rested for the final games of the season in preparation for the play-in. During a mostly healthy season, Leonard averaged a career-high 27.9 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists, and he played his second-most games as a Clipper. He played 68 games two seasons ago after being limited to 37 in 2024-25 because of injuries. The quiet part here is that the Warriors may be walking in with limits on the floor, while the Clippers may be walking in with legs that feel better.
So when Wednesday arrives, it won’t just be about who runs harder or shoots better — it’ll be about how the restrictions change what the game even looks like. Curry has to impact things without expanding beyond the plan, and the same goes for Porzingis and Horford. Somewhere in all this, you can almost hear it before tip-off: the squeak of sneakers on the court, the low hum of the arena, and the shared understanding that every minute might matter — or maybe not, depending on how quickly the game gets away from Golden State.
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