Curry’s approach shot on the par-4 14th hole Saturday at Edgewood sailed over the green and into a spectator tent, landing in a carpeted aisle. With encouragement from playing partner Justin Timberlake, Curry opted against taking a drop and grabbed his wedge so he could chip it from inside the tent.
Among fans in the chalet, most of whom had their cell phone cameras going, with a throng of people surrounding the green looking on — and Timberlake serving as his hype man —
Curry chipped it off the carpet, over the railing and onto the green, rolling just past the hole and onto the lip of the fringe. The crowd erupted.
A similar dare-type scenario happened in the first round Friday. A break in the action on the 17th hole, as usual, turned into playtime. The par-3 hole runs alongside the shore of the lake. Boats and people in swimwear, with drinks in hand, line the shore. Fans throw beach balls and footballs onto the grass, along with T-shirts and Sharpies hoping for autographs. A roll-out basketball court is set up at the bottom of the hill beneath the tee box.
(Photo: Bianca Rhodes/ @letsgowarriors)
Curry and Timberlake
delighted the crowd with long-range jumpers onto the court. Curry then decided to go in for a dunk. The rim looked 11-feet tall at the bottom of the incline. Still, he jogged down the hill and burst off two feet, missing the one-hand dunk. He tried again, missed another. One more try, one more miss.
“It’s so high,” Curry yelled to Timberlake. “It’s so high, JT.”
It’s not in him to walk away from the challenge.
That is perhaps cause for concern. Because Curry is 31, and this will be his 11th year, and the last two seasons he has missed games, including during the 2018 playoffs, with injury. How vulnerable is he with a heavier load, especially without Klay for at least the first half of the season?
“That will be the weird part,” he said of playing without Thompson as his longtime backcourt partner recovers from an ACL tear. “That will definitely be kind of strange.”
Each year, Curry creates an offseason plan with his trainer and guru, Brandon Payne of Accelerate Basketball, based on what is needed for the coming season and what happened the previous one. They are close to nailing down a plan, as Curry shifts gears to training. But they will have to engineer a plan for how Curry can return to MVP production while also preserving his body.
In his unanimous MVP season of 2015-16, Curry took a career-high 1,598 shots in the regular season while playing 2,700 minutes. Then Durant signed with the Warriors in July 2016 and Curry hasn’t hit those marks since.
With no Durant at all and no Thompson in the first several months of the season, Curry must get back to his old ways for the Warriors to have a chance. But the trick is to get the production of the MVP years without the minutes of the Mark Jackson years. In the two seasons before Kerr’s arrival — right after he signed his rookie extension — Curry averaged more than 37 minutes per game. He has averaged 33.4 minutes under Kerr, but in all five of those years the Warriors were loaded with talent and experience that allowed him to rest.
That’s the delicate balance the Warriors will have to manage — how to allow Curry to attack the challenge before him without wearing him out in the process. To that end, recovery will be high on Curry and Payne’s agenda. The presence of D’Angelo Russell, an All-Star who can carry the offense, figures to go a long way to helping this juggling act.
He feels renewed now. But keeping him fresh is the real challenge.
Adding to his offensive load against defenses singularly focused on Curry, which will assuredly follow a blueprint similar to what Toronto employed in the NBA Finals, will be Curry’s new defensive responsibilities. When the Warriors had a wealth of top defenders, they could afford to stash Curry on a lesser offensive threat.
The Warriors don’t have that luxury anymore, at least not until Thompson gets back. They don’t have the stable of perimeter defenders to counter the NBA’s wealth of scorers.
The Warriors’ expected decline on the defensive end is a primary reason many doubt the Warriors this season. That and a roster with eight new players, nine counting Jacob Evans, who hardly played last season. That and the youth up and down the lineup.
(Photo: Bianca Rhodes/ @letsgowarriors)
The break in the action on the 16th hole was coming to an end. Curry’s turn was near, leaving time for one final question.
Are the Warriors making the playoffs?
He was almost through the word “facts” when he realized it was a question and not a statement. Suddenly, his calm expression disappeared. His face scrunched and his voice elevated above a whisper, adding a shriek for emphasis.
“What?!” he said, playfully agitated by the sheer audacity of the question. “What?!”
Curry walked away, exiting the headspace of the coming NBA season, where doubt and uncertainty are pointed at his team, and re-entered the beautiful struggle of golf. He took a seat, chatted a little with Aaron Rodgers’ guest Danica Patrick before grabbing his driver and teeing off.
Curry has no interest in entertaining skepticism. That’s no way to start a new era.
(Top photo: Bianca Rhodes/ @letsgowarriors)
to all my Dubs folks, we in here and it's still not over. 
