Rockets spoil Curry return

Stephen Curry came back on Sunday night after a 27-game absence and looked like Stephen Curry almost immediately. He scored 29 points in 26 minutes, hit five 3s, and dragged Golden State from a 15-point hole to the edge of a win. Then Houston took the last clean breath of the game. Alperen Sengun slipped free for a layup with 11.1 seconds left, the Rockets escaped Chase Center 117-116, and Curry’s buzzer heave fell long (espn.com, nba.com). That ending mattered because the game was not just about a star’s return. It was about two teams living in very different parts of the Western Conference. Houston entered the night on a six-game winning streak and left it at 49-29, locked into the crowded middle of the playoff bracket. Golden State fell to 36-42, still stuck in 10th and staring at the play-in with almost no margin left to waste (espn.com, sports.yahoo.com). The shape of the game made that gap feel even wider. Houston had the steadier offense for most of the night and got a game-high 31 points from Kevin Durant, plus 24 from Sengun. Golden State spent long stretches chasing. Curry volunteered to come off the bench to manage his minutes, had a ragged first stint, then detonated in the second half with 19 points. By the final minutes, the Warriors were running almost entirely on his gravity and improvisation (espn.com, nbcbayarea.com). That was the revealing part. Curry’s return fixed Golden State’s pulse, not its structure. The Warriors had gone 9-18 during his absence after he last played on January 30, when what first looked minor turned into a two-month fight with persistent right-knee pain that Curry called his “new normal.” He said before the game that there is no structural damage, but the injury has been unpredictable enough that the team is still rationing his minutes in April (espn.com, apnews.com). So the loss landed with a strange double message. Golden State finally looked dangerous again because Curry can still bend a game in half. It also looked fragile because one brilliant scoring burst was not enough to cover everything else. ESPN reported that Curry expects a similar workload against Sacramento, with only a handful of regular-season games left before what is likely a do-or-die play-in path. That makes Sunday less a feel-good return than a preview of the problem: the Warriors have their engine back, but not much time to build around it (espn.com, nba.com). Houston, meanwhile, looked like a team that knows exactly what it is. It did not need a masterpiece. It needed one last composed possession. Durant drew the defense, Sengun cut into space, and the Rockets got the easiest basket available with the season almost out of calendar. Curry got the final shot anyway, from 30 feet, with the arena already leaning forward (nba.com, espn.com).