Curry's Oblique Tear: Re-Evaluated in Two Weeks, Expected Out Closer to a Month

The MRI results are in, and they are worse than the two weeks on the headline. Stephen Curry has an oblique abdominal tear, the Golden State Warriors announced Thursday, and he will be re-evaluated in two weeks. But ESPN reported the same day that the Warriors are bracing for their star to be out closer to a month — a stretch that starts tonight, on the road, against the best team in the West.

Curry exited Wednesday's 115-108 loss to the Houston Rockets at Toyota Center with 6:25 remaining in the first quarter, grabbing at his right side, and was ruled out with right abdominal soreness before having an MRI that night. He had played six minutes. The Game Center for Warriors at Rockets carries the full record of that night. According to ESPN's report, head coach Steve Kerr said Curry told him the tweak of his side was an injury he had never felt before. Previously covered the exit and the end of Golden State's eight-game winning streak on Thursday morning, when the severity was still unknown.

Two timelines, and only one of them is a return date

The club's public line is a checkpoint, not a comeback: re-evaluation in two weeks, which lands around November 26. ESPN's Shams Charania reported on NBA Today that he has been told Curry will be sidelined closer to one month with the tear, and that the two-week mark is when the Warriors will get a better feel for whether the rehab requires three weeks, four weeks, or more. TheScore and Sports Illustrated carried the same two-part picture — the announcement of the tear and the two-week re-evaluation, alongside Charania's reporting that the absence is expected to run longer.

ESPN's injury report, updated Friday, already lists an estimated return date of December 12 for Curry — a full month after the injury, and two weeks past the re-evaluation checkpoint. The recent precedent points the same way: when Austin Reaves suffered a partial oblique tear, he missed 25 days, as Sports Illustrated noted in its timeline report.

There is a medical reason to believe the longer estimate. Oblique and abdominal tears heal slower than strains, and sports-medicine analysis cited by Bleacher Report put the recent average absence for a tear at roughly five and a half weeks, against about two weeks for a strain. Curry has never dealt with this injury before, which removes the one reference point the Warriors would normally lean on. Plan for a month. Be pleased if it is less.

At least seven games, starting with the hardest one

ESPN listed the games Curry will miss at a minimum: at San Antonio tonight, then New Orleans, Dallas, Memphis, Boston, Sacramento and Portland. Tonight's is an NBA Cup group game against a Spurs team that is 10-2 and has won ten straight, capped by Wednesday's 22-point comeback win in Chicago behind 32 points from Victor Wembanyama.

And Curry is not the only absence. Golden State's injury report for San Antonio also lists Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody, still recovering from the knee injuries that ended their 2025-26 seasons, Kristaps Porzingis, and Brandon Williams (hamstring), per Heavy's report of the official list. Reports out of the Bay Area this week suggested Butler and Moody are progressing ahead of schedule, but neither is close to tonight.

What Golden State has instead is what it showed in Houston after Curry left: rookie Yaxel Lendeborg, who scored 25, and Brandin Podziemski, who scored 22, plus De'Anthony Melton and LJ Cryer in the backcourt mix. The Warriors are 8-4, a start built largely on Curry. The next two weeks — or four — will show what is underneath it.

The moment Curry left Wednesday's game is in the clip below, from ESPN's game record.

It starts tonight in San Antonio, against the 10-2 Spurs

Tip in San Antonio is 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Prime Video, an NBA Cup group game. The full matchup — box score, play-by-play and live updates — is in the Game Center for Golden State at San Antonio, and the rest of the Cup board is on the Previously NBA hub. Golden State's next formal word on Curry is expected at the two-week re-evaluation, around November 26.