After such a long stretch of dominance, it was weird to see the Golden State Warriors be relatively irrelevant last season as Klay Thompson missed the year with a torn Achilles and Steph Curry was shut down after just five games.
Certainly the Warriors' opponents didn't mind every night in the 2019-20 season, as the tandem is quite the handful when they're healthy, to say the least.
But Curry returned this season and in 20 starts for the Warriors averaging 27.7 points, 6.1 assists and 5.4 rebounds and shooting 46.3% from the field and 40.8% from deep.
So while Celtics coach Brad Stevens admitted he missed watching the three-time NBA champions while they were out, he's not thrilled about planning defensive schemes to guard him in his return.
"As a fan of the NBA, I missed watching Steph and Klay last year. I think that they're great for the game in every which way," Stevens on Wednesday praised in a media availability ahead of the Celtics game against Golden State. "As the opposing coach, I don't mind it when Steph goes out of the game. He's awfully good and he puts a lot of pressure on your defense."
For a Celtics defense that has struggled so far this season, they started to pick things up against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, despite the Saturday night loss.
Curry will be huge challenge, too.
"You can't take away everything. You do your best to make it as challenging as possible, and you also have to do your best so that all your attention on him doesn't get easy baskets for everyone else," Stevens said. "So that's always been our emphasis coming here. I mean he's gonna score some, and he's gonna hit a few 3s that are on SportsCenter tonight. That's the way it goes... You just have to do your best to stay disciplined, not overreact, tip your cap on a great shot and just guard him as well as you can the next time."
The Celtics and Warriors tip off from Chase Center at 10 p.m. ET.
