LOS ANGELES — Shortly after 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Stephen Curry will bounce onto the court at the Intuit Dome. He’ll sprint to the basket stanchion beyond one baseline, do his pre-tipoff ritual, and briefly bro-hug longtime teammate Draymond Green. Then Curry will experience meaningful basketball once again.
It sounds dramatic, but it’s also just… basketball. Like, actual court, actual stakes.
There are a lot of ways to tell the story of Curry’s transcendent career with the Golden State Warriors. Still, these numbers feel especially relevant right now: Wednesday night’s play-in opener will mark the franchise’s 176th postseason game over the past 17 years, since drafting Curry in 2009. Golden State played only 11 postseason games in its previous 15, pre-Steph seasons. So yeah, this season’s not just another chapter—it’s the franchise’s whole identity snapping back into focus, then asking a very specific question: can the Warriors survive another round of “win or you go home”?
The task is brutal on paper. Curry and the Warriors are back in the fray, embarking on an uphill quest to return to the playoffs. They must win twice on the road—first against the Los Angeles Clippers and then Friday against Phoenix—to earn the daunting assignment of facing reigning NBA champion Oklahoma City. And set the logistics aside for a second. Remember this: Curry really will play “meaningful basketball” Wednesday. That’s his oft-stated goal at age 38, and he made it happen—maybe not for long—after missing more than two months with a lingering knee injury.
As for how the play-in has gone for Golden State, it’s been a mixed bag. The Warriors are 1-3 in the NBA play-in tournament. 2025: As No. 7 seed, beat Memphis 121-116. 2024: As No. 10 seed, lost at Sacramento 118-94. 2021: As No. 8 seed, lost at Lakers 103-100, then lost to Memphis 117-112 (OT). The weird part is that it doesn’t feel like just numbers. It feels like a pattern that keeps testing whether this core can bend without breaking.
Curry has been talking for a while about the idea behind his “meaningful basketball” phrase—kind of trying to keep the run together. “It was a concept of how I wanted us to end this run,” he said Tuesday, referring to the origin of his pet phrase. “It’s hard to keep this thing together, we all know that. What we’ve done over the last decade-plus has been very special and unique.” And then he went there—still competitive, still chasing championships, with the framework Golden State built over years.
But the effort to keep it together has sputtered at times. After those five straight NBA Finals (2015-19), the next season turned ugly with injuries to Thompson and Curry, the league’s worst record, then a bounce through chaos: play-in loss, championship, conference semifinals, play-in loss, conference semifinals. There was a spark in February 2025 with the acquisition of Jimmy Butler as Curry’s new sidekick, fueling last season’s surge into the playoffs and a first-round takedown of Houston. This season started to feel like groove again—until Butler went down Jan. 19 with a torn ACL.
Then Curry vanished for 27 games with a stubborn case of runner’s knee. Questions popped up, naturally—about whether this comeback was the right call. Curry said he was driven to return, in large part, to team up with Green and get back in the mix. “I’m so happy he made it back for this reason—meaningful basketball, a challenge,” Kerr said. “He’s 38, so who knows how many more chances he’ll have?” And that’s the part that hangs over everything. Butler and Moses Moody (torn patellar tendon) figure to miss at least half of next season, which complicates Curry’s quest to return to the playoffs in his age-39 season.
So Wednesday night could become the last time Warriors fans watch No. 30 in the postseason. Even if it’s “only” a play-in game. The stakes make everybody lock in, especially Curry. Kerr talked about how Green approaches this kind of matchup—with laser focus ahead of the game with Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers. And both Kerr and Green also noted how intensely Curry locks in when the game matters most. When you have his skills, Green said, you can bail yourself out in regular moments, but in playoffs time it’s different: Curry’s focus goes to a “completely different level,” he talks more, puts guys in position, tells people what they’re going to see. It’s calming, Green said—almost like the room knows it’s safe while the chaos is still coming.
There’s history to back that up, too. Green pointed to Game 4 of the 2022 NBA Finals in Boston, when the Warriors were trailing two games to one. Curry—calm, somehow—went for 43 points and 10 rebounds, the Warriors won, and the momentum flipped toward the fourth title of the Curry era. There’s also last year’s play-in game against Memphis: Green missed a 3 from the corner in the final three minutes, then Curry told Green to look for him if the situation repeated itself. Green took it as, basically, “Pass me the damn ball.” He did—Curry buried it.
You could almost feel it in the arena—like the air was a little drier than usual, the kind where the ball sounds louder when it leaves a shooter’s hand. Curry’s had that effect for years. Think of his 50-point outburst in Game 7 against Sacramento in 2023, or last year’s Game 7 against Houston where his 22 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists got him noticed even with Buddy Hield’s big moment. And then the Olympics in 2024 against Serbia and France—epic performances that felt like another reminder: he still has gears.
Now the Warriors need at least one more superhero stretch from him on Wednesday. They arrive after losing 26 of their final 38 regular-season games (since Butler’s injury). They’re on the road. Their best player is 38 years old and has participated in only four games since Jan. 30. Odds are stacked against Stephen Curry—no denying that. But he’s playing meaningful basketball, so it would be wise to pay attention. And for a lot of fans, the “maybe it’s the last time” thought won’t really leave until the final buzzer—whatever that buzzer ends up sounding like.
Curry faces minutes restriction as Warriors chase must-win play-in vs Clippers