Stephen Curry goes around the back in comfortable win over Spurs
The Golden State Warriors came into Friday’s game against the San Antonio Spurs with two losses at Oracle Arena over the season to date. One of them came against the Spurs in the seventh game of the season, back when the Warriors were just a playoff team with potential to grow and not the NBA-leading force they are now. Their first game after the All-Star break would lend them a chance to avenge that loss and prove themselves against a team that has foiled them throughout recent history. Before Friday, the Warriors had beaten the Spurs just twice in 24 contests, or about as often as Gregg Popovich gives a sideline reporter a legitimate answer in a between-quarters interview.
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Well, the Golden State now 3-22 in their last 25 vs. San Antonio. The Warriors controlled the game for all but a few of the 48 minutes and led by 21 after three quarters on their way to a 110-99 win. Like many of their 43 wins so far this season, the Warriors were able to do it with a mix of toughness and finesse. Steph Curry’s behind-the-back lay-up near the end of the first half was more the latter than the former:
Somewhat surprisingly, Curry said that he hadn’t ever made a move like this one before:
This lob to Andrew Bogut a few minutes prior wasn’t so bad, either:
Curry finished with 25 points and 10 assists, making a particularly big impact after earning a technical foul just before the 5:00 mark of the second quarter. He followed the tech with six points and three assists to end the quarter and continued to impress over the beginning of the second half as the Warriors opened up a wide lead.
The silver lining for the Spurs is that they were able to rest their players on the second game of a road back-to-back. Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili played a combined 60 minutes with no Spurs seeing more than Aron Baynes’s 25 minutes. Frankly, that lack of playing time for the team’s marquee players didn’t necessarily affect the final margin. Parker had a particularly rough game, shooting 0-of-4 from the field and scoring just two points on technical free throws. It was oddly the second time in two months that Parker had gone without a field goal — before doing so on January 5 vs. the Detroit Pistons, he had not failed to score from the field while playing more than two minutes since 2004.
Of course, the Spurs have earned the right to have a bad game, and it will take a lot more than a loss to the best team in the NBA to cause significant concern. There’s no great shame in getting beaten handily by the Warriors.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
