HOUSTON — The first half of a ferocious game ended with bodies sprawled all over the place. At one end of the floor, Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors rolled onto his stomach after a punishing fall so he could watch mayhem unfold at the other end: players scrambling at the buzzer, and then Stephen Curry emerging with a limp.

Game 4 of the Warriors’ first-round playoff series against the Houston Rockets on Sunday afternoon was a basketball mudslide, and Curry got the worst of it. In his well-publicized return from a right ankle sprain, Curry injured his right knee on the final play of the first half, appearing to have slipped on a wet spot while defending the Rockets’ Trevor Ariza.

The Warriors played the rest of the game without him, escaping from the muck with a 121-94 victory that gave them a three-games-to-one lead in their best-of-seven series. But Curry’s latest injury cast a pall on the visiting locker room — and any lingering effects could make the Warriors’ pursuit of another championship that much more challenging.

The Warriors assessed the injury as a sprain, but Coach Steve Kerr said Curry would have a magnetic resonance imaging test Monday. Game 5 is scheduled for Wednesday night in Oakland, Calif. The Warriors were subdued in the wake of Sunday’s game. They mulled the possibility of postseason life without Curry, the league’s reigning most valuable player.