© Neville E. Guard | 2020 Feb 25
The Warriors held Stephen Curry back from playing on Sunday, with Steve Kerr citing a lack of scrimmage time as the primary factor. That led to Curry being sent down to Santa Cruz for a competitive scrimmage on Monday, as he gears up for a hopeful return vs. the Raptors on Thursday.
So, how’d it go? Santa Cruz play-by-play man Kevin Danna watched the entire thing and gave the scoop to Papa & Lund on Monday.
After a slow start, Curry found his groove. Not only that, Curry was matched up against what was once a top-tier NBA wing defender.
“He missed his first couple of shots as he was kind of getting his legs underneath him, but then he started going,” Danna said. “And once he started hitting, he didn’t go back to missing much anymore.
“He was going up against (Jonathon) Simmons pretty much the last two quarters of scrimmages that they had.”
That’s when Curry started looking like his old self.
“There was one play where Simmons was ‘on him on him’ about 25-26 feet out, right side of the floor, Steph just rose up and drilled one in his face. It was really good NBA level defense. It was a fun little back-and-forth that he and Simmons had.
“There was another time where he had the ball on the left side of the floor and Santa Cruz head coach Kris Weems said, ‘Set a screen for him.’ Steph just shot the three from 27-28 feet, drills it. It was definitely fun to see.”
Danna also said that Curry’s left hand, which he broke on Oct. 30, looked fine during the scrimmage.
“He threw — on a dime — a pass from the left wing to the opposite right corner to set up his guy for a three. He didn’t shoot any lefty layups in the scrimmage. But there wasn’t anything with that left hand that I noticed that was weaker than the right hand. It looked like the same old Steph.”