Steph Curry ruled out for Warriors’ do-or-die Game 5

The Warriors have officially ruled out Steph Curry from Game 5 of their series with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Golden State must stave off elimination without its two-time MVP superstar in a road environment after losing the last three games since he went down with a hamstring injury in Game 1.

The team’s injury report submitted to the NBA on Tuesday afternoon confirmed Curry would miss his fourth straight game in the series.

“That’s been the expectation all along,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr told reporters Tuesday night. “All I knew is that there’s no way he was playing (tonight), so that was not a surprise to me that we deemed him out.  That was kind of a foregone conclusion.”

The Warriors had hinted after their loss to the Wolves in Game 4 not to expect to see Curry in Game 5.

“No, we’re not going to Superman this thing,” Draymond Green said Monday, adding that it would be up to Curry and sports medicine director Rick Celebrini. “But we don’t need Superman. Play the long game.”

“Even if I wanted to be Superman, I couldn’t,” Curry told Marc Spears of ESPN’s Andscape on Monday while saying he didn’t expect to be available for Game 5.

The Warriors identified Wednesday as Curry’s re-evaluation date when they first announced his Grade 1 hamstring strain had been confirmed by an MRI a week ago, the morning after he pulled up and clutched at his leg during the second quarter of Game 1.

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Curry has been on the sidelines of each game since, sitting on the bench with his teammates and talking with them during timeouts. But without him on the court, they have been unable to generate much offensive flow without the spacing his style of play affords.

Again, the onus will fall on Jimmy Butler and Jonathan Kuminga, the team’s top two scorers since Curry’s injury, to summon enough to force a Game 6 and hope Curry is able to return to the court by Sunday. Butler himself was battling illness on Monday, Green said, as well as a glute contusion he suffered during the first round against the Rockets.

Kuminga, who was out of the rotation before Curry’s injury, provides some direct-line drives for an offense that desperately needs paint penetration, but he does not offer the passing or shooting touch that makes Curry unique.