Warriors news: Steph Curry minutes restriction; Dubs, Hield, Kerr all make more history

With Stephen Curry back on the floor after missing the last three games with a peroneal strain, the Golden State Warriors continued their hot start to the 2024-25 NBA season, improving to 6-1 with a 125-112 win over the Washington Wizards on Monday night.

Despite playing on a hard minutes restriction, Curry led the team in scoring for the first time this season, posting 24 points in 24 minutes, hitting seven of 15 shots overall and four of nine from beyond the arc. Despite not starting the second half, the two-time NBA MVP scored 13 of his 24 in the third quarter on 5-for-7 shooting.

Draymond Green kicked in 18 points, hitting double digits for the third straight game, also adding eight rebounds, five assists, and a block. As he tends to do, Green also added a little extra entertainment as he got into it a bit with former Warrior Jordan Poole, who, of course, was the recipient of his infamous punch a few years back.

Also hitting double digits from the starting five — the fifth unique starting five in the last five games, by the way — was Trayce Jackson-Davis, who hit six of 11 shots en route to 12 points. The second-year lefty continues to impress, and while his shooting percentage actually dropped in this game, he's still connected on 73.2% of his field-goal attempts thus far, good for second in the league behind only Detroit Pistons center Jalen Duren (85.7 percent).

As per usual, the Warriors' bench was fantastic, which we'll get to in more detail in just a moment, as the reserves helped make some more franchise history. But we'll kick things off with a little more on Curry.

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Stephen Curry may have his minutes restriction lifted against the Celtics on Wednesday

With Curry having missed the last week, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr naturally wanted to ease his superstar back into things, which is why he implemented a strict 24-minute limit on Monday night, which he impressively only surpassed by five seconds.

But given how well Curry played and how he seemed to be moving around the floor with no issues, it appears that the minute restriction might be limited to just this one game.

Asked about Curry's availability for Wednesday night's high-profile matchup with the one-loss Boston Celtics in his postgame press conference, Kerr said everything depends on how the 10-time All-Star feels on Tuesday.

"Probably depends on how he comes out tomorrow," Kerr said. "But there were no problems at all tonight. He got through everything well, and assuming he feels good tomorrow, I don't anticipate a big minutes restriction or anything like that for Boston."

That's obviously nothing but good news for the Warriors, especially since the game against Boston is just the first of three tough matchups on their upcoming schedule. Following Wednesday night's matchup with the Celtics, Golden State closes out its five-game road trip with the currently undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday and the currently undefeated Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday.

Steve Kerr became just the second in Warriors history to coach 800 regular-season games

As for Kerr himself, he made a little NBA history on Monday night as he became just the 18th person to coach 800 regular-season games with one franchise. He's also just the second to do so with Golden State, joining the late Alvin Attles, who passed away this past August at the age of 87.

Attles spent 11 seasons with the Warriors as a player from 1960 to 1971 and actually began his coaching career during his playing days. He began as an assistant in 1968 and took over head coaching duties midway through the 1969-70 campaign, succeeding George Lee.

Attles ultimately coached 1,075 regular-season games for Golden State and led the team to an NBA title in 1975.

As for Kerr, he's gone 525-275 in his 800 regular-season games and needs just 33 more victories to surpass Attles' career total of 557.

The Warriors' bench as a whole and Buddy Hield made more franchise history against the Wizards

To say the Warriors' bench has been fantastic this season would almost be an understatement at this point. They've already set several NBA and franchise records in the early weeks of this season and did so again on Monday night.

With 60 total points against the Wizards, Golden State reserves have now scored 50 or more points in six of the team's first seven games, marking the first time in franchise history that bench players have hit that point total in six of seven at any point during a season.

It's also just the second time in NBA history that reserves have achieved this feat in the first seven outings of a season, joining the 1999-2000 Orlando Magic.

Twenty of those 60 points came from Buddy Hield, who continues to lead the Warriors in scoring at 21.9 points per game. In the win over Washington, Hield hit three of seven shots from the three-point line, giving him 33 triples for the season, tied for the second-most in the league with Jayson Tatum. Only Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards has hit more with 36.

Hield's 33 three-pointers are the most by any player in league history in his first seven games with a new team.