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Steph Curry is working his way back to the court after a painful injury, but the Golden State Warriors star is still making his presence known in the locker room.
Curry reportedly spoke to teammates after a blowout loss this week, delivering a speech in the hopes of turning their season around and avoiding missing the playoffs for a second straight year. The remarks, shared by one of Curry’s teammates, challenged the players to perform better.
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Curry Calls Out Teammates
Following the team’s 124-108 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Friday, Curry reportedly addressed his teammates in the locker room and implored them to improve. Warriors big man Kevon Looney shared some of Curry’s speech, which was relayed by ESPN’s Nick Friedell.
“Looney said that Curry had a message for his teammates after the game — basically to look themselves in the mirror and see how they can get better,” Friedell tweeted. “Looney said he appreciated the message and noted that Draymond offered a few words as well.”
The lockerroom speech was not out of the ordinary for Curry this season. With fellow Splash Brother Klay Thompson sidelined with an Achilles injury and the team struggling through various other injuries and COVID-19 setbacks, the former league MVP has taken on a more vocal leadership role than he has in the past, Wes Goldberg of the Mercury News reported.
The Warriors struggled on defense in Friday’s loss, missing rotations and allowing Hawks forward John Collins to a career-high 38 points — many of them on defensive breakdowns. Warriors players blamed their on-court communication and effort in the defensive end, though playing a second game in two days immediately after many of the players had received their COVID-19 vaccines could have also played a role.
“Energy and communication,” rookie Nico Mannion said of the team’s breakdowns on Friday, via ESPN. “I think we’re falling into a little hole of not competing.”
Curry Remains Out
It will be a bit longer before Curry can be a leader on the court again. The guard suffered a tailbone contusion after taking an awkward fall against the Houston Rockets, and has missed the last five games. The team went 1-4 during that stretch, falling to 22-24 and to tenth place in the Western Conference and the edge of the newly expanded play-in tournament.
Earlier in the week, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said that Curry would be out for at least the remainder of the week after an MRI showed inflammation in the tailbone.
“He had made some progress the first couple of days just resting,” Kerr said, via the USA Today’s Warriors Wire. “He did a little bit more work yesterday and it was still pretty sore. So, our training staff and Steph put their heads together and decided this is going to be a little bit longer than we thought and hoped. We will re-evaluate in a week. Which means he will miss the next three games.”
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