Three minutes into the first quarter of Rockets vs. Warriors Game 2, Stephen Curry dislocated his finger swiping at a rebound. At first it looked like he was holding his wrist. Then, an alternate camera angle showed the middle finger on his left hand.
James Harden and Stephen Curry both played through injuries in Game 2. Will they linger?
If Game 1 was about officiating, Game 2 was about the stars playing through injuries.
It didn’t look pretty.
Curry left and went to the locker room, where trainers snapped his finger back into place. He played the rest of the game with his left middle and ring fingers taped together.
But before Curry returned, James Harden exited with an eye injury, via Draymond Green reaching for a rebound. Mike D’Antoni said “Harden was bleeding from the eye.” When he returned in the second quarter, the gash in that eye was visible.
This was what Harden looked like for much of the game. He said he could barely see and that everything was blurry. This looks like a man who’s looking for the rim.
Curry joked it off, saying the quickest remedy to his finger injury was getting some reps out on the golf course. He was in good spirits, in spite of an injury that visibly threw his game off.
But Harden’s eye was clear bothering him, as well. He grimaced in pain every time the camera focused on him. He could barely read the box score during postgame interviews. He even had moments of hypersensitivity to lighting.
Injuries can make or break a playoff series, and there’s no telling how severe either Curry or Harden’s injuries were. Both are going to play through it, because both understand the light at the end of the tunnel is the shimmer of a championship trophy.
But last year it was an injury to Chris Paul, and the year before that, it was an injury to Kawhi Leonard. Can we finally have a postseason where Warriors opponents are actually healthy?
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