Watch the floor widen again
Stephen Curry returned to the Warriors lineup on April 5, and the cleanest thing to watch next is not his point total. It is the shape of the court. Curry changes possessions before he touches the ball because defenders keep leaning toward him, and that lean can stretch a cramped trip into a wider one.
The real signal is visual
That is what his return is supposed to restore for Golden State: floor pressure. Not emotion. Not nostalgia. Pressure. The kind that makes a defender take two nervous steps higher, the kind that opens a passing window a beat earlier, the kind that turns a crowded possession into one with air in it.
So the next read should stay narrow. Do the Warriors look like a team whose actions pull the defense sideways again? Does Curry's presence force more attention than the rest of the possession used to earn on its own? If the answer is yes, the return is doing real work immediately. If the answer is no, then the headline is arriving before the geometry does.
The judgment
Curry's return matters because he can redraw the possession map on sight. That is the watch item. If Golden State suddenly looks harder to pinch, crowd, and flatten, then his presence is restoring something structural. If not, then having him back is still just the beginning of the story, not the solved version of it.