“Even if I wanted to be Superman, I couldn’t,” said Stephen Curry when discussing his left hamstring injury. From holding the 11th seed back in February to reaching the Conference Semi-Finals, the Golden State Warriors had a comeback unlike any other team. Unfortunately, their progress got tampered with after the star player sustained the first hamstring injury of his NBA career. There couldn’t have been a worse time in the tournament to sustain the ailment, as the Warriors lost all 3 games in his absence.

Now only a loss away from elimination, Steve Kerr and the team have chosen to move forward without maintaining hope for the 3-point leader’s availability.

ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk recently published a report about the Warriors’ current abysmal situation. Draymond Green, who had been informed about Curry’s ‘Superman’ comment, dismissed it, since he wasn’t asking Curry to risk himself if he wasn’t at his best. As reported by Youngmisuk, the power forward said during a presser that “No, we’re not going to Superman this thing. If he’s in a place where he can play, I’m sure he will. Him and Rick [Celebrini, Warriors vice president of player health and performance] and everybody will figure that out. But we don’t need [Curry to try to be] Superman”.

Green further added that Curry has “Got to play the long game. If he can, we know he will. But there’s no pressure. We’ve got to figure out how to win whether he plays or not.”

Without Curry, however, how will the Warriors survive in Game 5? Steve Kerr answered that in the presser after Game 4. When a reporter asked the coach about the difficulty of getting players like Moses Moody and Quinten Post playing in the series, Kerr highlighted that after Curry’s injury, the team had to reformulate everything to put the best possible two-way lineup on the floor.

The way that things transpired, especially after the recent 117-110 loss, Kerr seems intent to change things around. “Given the result tonight, we’ve got to look at game five and see if we want to make any lineup changes, and rotation changes, but those guys (Moody and Post) will both be ready”.

Kerr certainly believes that Quinten Post and Moses Moody can make a difference. After all, in his own words, “I thought the last four and a half minutes was fantastic, you know, the young guys going out there, playing the way they did, forcing Minnesota to keep their starters out there. Um, that’s important, it’s always important to close games well, and I loved what those guys did. And um, they all played well. And that matters to me, looking at, you know, what’s next for game five”.

Sure, Moody and Post made only 5 and 3 points, but they were also on the court for only 5 and 7 minutes, respectively. With more time, they can certainly make a difference in that frontcourt.

Simply relying on those two players, however, is not what Steve Kerr wants for Game 5. After all, the Warriors need 3 wins to avoid elimination, while the Timberwolves need only 1. Nothing can be left to chance. So, Kerr is also hoping to see Jimmy Butler get back into character for Game 5.

Steve Kerr wants more openings for Jimmy Butler

Golden State’s offense has taken a major hit since Curry’s injury. Even with the 3-point leader out, however, it was expected that Jimmy Butler would pick up the slack. After all, the veteran played a major role in helping the Warriors climb out of that 11th seed ditch in the regular season. Curry himself credited him by stating, “That’s why we’re here”.

Unfortunately, just as we know this, so do the Timberwolves. Their defense kept Jimmy Butler at bay. He was left to struggle, with the Timberwolves allowing him to put up just 14 points on 9 shots. That led Steve Kerr to realize that the team, as a whole, will have to work to help the veteran.

When discussing Butler’s performance, Steve Kerr said, “He wasn’t as aggressive tonight, but I didn’t see a lot of openings either. Ideally, we could put more shooting around him to open up the floor a little bit, but with Steph out, we are not gonna be able to do as much of that” said Kerr.

“With that said, we’ll look at the tape and see where we can find some openings for him, and I know he will be aggressive for Game 5.”

Jimmy Butler carried a lot of pressure going into Game 4. Plus, his minutes have seen an increase since Curry’s injury. Steve Kerr had previously highlighted that he would have loved to have given Jimmy Butler a few more minutes of rest in Game 3. But without Steph Curry on the court, his hand was effectively forced.

Furthermore, we cannot forget that the player only recently admitted that he is still hurting from the pelvis injury that he suffered in the first round against the Houston Rockets. Several fans reportedly pointed to this issue as the reason behind Butler not looking like himself on Monday night.

Steve Kerr is Jerry Maguire, asking Butler to ‘Help me help you’. After all, he has to try every available method to save the Warriors from elimination. The upcoming hours will be the most crucial for Golden State, and it remains to be seen whether Kerr and Butler will be able to pull things off without their ‘Superman.’