Curry Leaves for an MRI as Rockets Snap the Warriors' Eight-Game Streak

Five and a half minutes is all Golden State got of its best player. Steph Curry hit a 28-foot three with about 7:22 left in the first quarter at the Toyota Center on Wednesday, grabbed at his right side as he backpedalled, and winced. A minute later he checked out — 6:25 left in the quarter, the Warriors down 19–10 — said a brief word to Steve Kerr and walked straight to the locker room, holding his right side, with head athletic trainer Drew Yoder beside him. He never came back. The Warriors ruled him out near the start of the second quarter, and by the time the game ended, Houston had a 115–108 win and Golden State's eight-game win streak was over.

What Kerr said afterward is the story now. Curry left the arena during the second half to get an MRI, the coach told reporters, and the team had not received the results when he spoke. "He said he tweaked something in his abdominal area and said he's never done it before," Kerr said. Asked about his level of concern, he did not dress it up: "I mean, concern is high, but I have no idea the extent of the injury." The team's designation is right abdominal soreness. There is no diagnosis beyond that, no timetable, and no word on whether Curry is available Friday at San Antonio — nothing real to print past the MRI itself, and that is exactly where the story stands.

It lands on a team that could least spare him. Curry came into the night averaging 30.6 points, second in the league, in his 18th season — and Golden State was already playing without Jimmy Butler, who is rehabbing the torn ACL he suffered in January. The Warriors' streak, their longest since 2022, was built on both of them. It ended with one in the locker room and the other not in the building's plans at all.

Houston, meanwhile, never trailed. The Rockets opened 35–20, led 56–51 at the half, and got the kind of balanced night that does not need a single hero: Alperen Sengun finished with 19 points, 13 rebounds and 9 assists, one dime short of a triple-double. Kevin Durant, hosting his old team in his first season in Houston, scored a team-high 20 with 11 of them in the first quarter — on a night he also passed Shaquille O'Neal for seventh on the all-time field-goals list. Amen Thompson added 19, 15 of them after halftime, and Fred VanVleet had 18 and finished a game-best plus-25.

Golden State's fight, without Curry, ran through a rookie. Yaxel Lendeborg scored a game-high 25 with 10 rebounds, 18 of them in the first half, and Brandin Podziemski added 22. The Warriors even won the boards, 48–40. It did not matter: they shot 40.9 percent and handed Houston 23 points off 13 turnovers, and every time the game tightened, the Rockets had an answer. Curry's final line for the night: 3 points in 5 minutes 35 seconds.

The fourth quarter was the last test. Sengun fed Reed Sheppard for back-to-back threes that pushed a tight game out to 96–85; Golden State clawed back within 96–91 with 7:10 left, and Houston answered with a 15–2 run to 111–93 that closed the door. Sheppard finished with 13 off the bench, all three of his threes coming in a fourth-quarter flurry. The night's other flashpoint came earlier: Marcus Smart was ejected with 21 seconds left in the third quarter, a Flagrant 2 for punching Golden State's Charles Bassey, with Houston up 84–76 at the time.

So the streak stops at eight, Golden State falls to 8–4, and Houston — 9–3 now, 6–1 at home — has beaten the Warriors in consecutive meetings. But the standings are not what anyone in Golden State is thinking about tonight. The season's most important player left a game five minutes in with something he told his coach he has never felt before, and the answer is sitting in MRI results nobody had yet when the building emptied. Follow every play in the Game Center.