Golden State Would Be Devastated by a Serious Injury to Stephen Curry

Stephen Curry was the player the Warriors dreamed of when he picked apart defenses and guided Davidson to success during his prized college career.

Once they nabbed him in the draft, they were set for successful seasons ahead. Until the injury bug got the best of Curry.

Curry had his ankle surgically repaired and was ready to dominate the shortened season. Unfortunately, on Tuesday night, during the first half of Golden State's preseason finale in Sacramento, Curry rolled his ankle while trying to defend a Jimmer Fredette crossover.

Now, Golden State has to go back to the drawing board. That means that once again, during Curry's absence, the fate of the Warriors is up to star guard Monta Ellis, who has no legitimate star to support him.

Ellis is a great player, but we've all seen Monta keep a contest close putting up 30 or 40 points before the Warriors lose a tight game. We've seen it happen with and without Curry, and without Curry, it will be hard for Ellis to pick up the slack for the team.

Curry has missed 12 games, and Golden State has finished with a 5-7 record in those games, with five blowout losses. Without Curry, the door is opened for inexperienced Klay Thompson and struggling Brandon Rush, who will not fill the hole left by the Warriors' star point guard.

Every time Curry is reaching his potential, he gets injured, loses minutes and sometimes sits out entire games, and it takes a little while to recover. Missing a couple games would be fine, and if Curry could play healthy in Saturday night's opener against the Clippers, then that would be fantastic for the Warriors.

However, missing a long period of time would likely leave Golden State with a losing record, and the fact that Golden State starts the season with the Clippers, Bulls, Knicks, Sixers, Suns, Spurs, Lakers, Jazz, Heat and Magic doesn't help at all.

An injured Curry wouldn't be much help there, and Golden State would likely start with a losing record. And if Curry injured that same ankle again (like he has so many times) in a spurt of games against weak teams, the Warriors would have extra blemishes on their record, which wouldn't be good.

The bottom line is, the loss of Curry would equal another losing season, because Klay Thompson and Brandon Rush will not fill the void as effectively as Curry would have.

Even losing Curry for five games would make it extremely difficult for Golden State to climb into the playoff picture, with Curry's nagging ankle setting the talented guard back.

So without Curry, Golden State will be without wins. It would devastate the Warriors greatly to tolerate another losing season, and without Curry, that's where they'd be going. Ticket sales would go down, and in the end, it'd hurt everyone except the other 29 teams.

The fate of the Warriors is in the hands of Stephen Curry.