Steph Curry erupts for 38 points, 11 dimes as Warriors beat Kings
The Golden State Warriors have continued to steamroll the competition over the past couple of weeks, staying in their league-leading offensive flow and keeping up the historic pace necessary to both hold off the similarly unreal San Antonio Spurs for the top spot in the Western Conference and give themselves a real shot at breaking the 72-10 1995-96 Chicago Bulls’ record for most wins in a single season. They’ve done so thanks largely to the all-court excellence of power forward Draymond Green, who entered Saturday’s action with triple-doubles in four of his last five games, and the white-hot scoring of shooting guard Klay Thompson, who had scored 30 or more points and made six or more 3-pointers in four of his last five.
[Follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
In other words, they haven’t done so on the strength of unbelievable offensive performances by superstar point guard Stephen Curry. The NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player and the leader in the race for this season’s Podoloff Trophy has battled a nagging shin bruise that has kept him out of two games and forced his early exit from a third, and entered Saturday having scored fewer than 20 points in four of his last seven appearances; that had happened just twice in his first 27 games of the season. (By comparison, he’d scored 40 or more points seven times in that span.)
As brilliant as the Warriors can be regardless, they become high art when Steph’s soaring, and can become vulnerable when he’s not. Some of those inclined to look for evidence of cloud cover within the silver lining of a 34-2 record found themselves wondering when Curry (who, to be fair, did score 30 points in 31 minutes on Monday) was going to get back in the business of having capital-b Big Games. They got their answer Saturday, when the Warriors traveled north to take on the Sacramento Kings.
Curry incinerated Sacramento’s defense, scoring 38 points on 12-for-21 shooting, including a blistering 8-for-14 from 3-point land, to go with a season-high 11 assists, six rebounds, a block, a steal and plenty of trademark swaggering moments in 38 minutes to lead Golden State to a 128-116 victory. Green added 25 points on 8-for-12 shooting (5-for-6 from deep) with nine rebounds, four assists, two blocks and two steals in 34 minutes for the Dubs, who earned a 4-0 season-series sweep over Sacramento for the third straight season, extended their overall winning streak to six games, and improved their league-best mark to 35-2, the best 37-game start in NBA history.
After a chilly opening to the game that saw him start 1-for-4 from the floor in the first quarter, Curry warmed up in a hurry in the second. He scored 16 points in less than seven minutes to give the Warriors the upper hand over a Kings team that, just as it did two weeks ago, seemed intent on taking the fight right to the defending champs, getting physical on the interior and taking an early lead behind the bruising shotmaking of DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay.
The hulking Cousins scored 13 of his own in the second to keep Sacramento in the contest, heading into intermission down only two points at 60-58. As they have so many times over these past two seasons, though, the Warriors hit the gas after halftime.
Cousins picked up his fourth foul just over two minutes into the frame, with Sacramento trailing 65-62, and Golden State took advantage of coach George Karl keeping him on the bench for the duration of the period. Thompson and Green combined for 16 points on nine shots, helping Golden State hang 36 on the Kings in the third quarter on 15-for-22 shooting to take a 12-point advantage into the final frame.
Curry made just one shot in the third, but it was a doozy … and it came off a loose-ball scramble, pinned against the sideline in the left corner, and at the direct expense of his younger brother, Seth Curry, who continues to fight for a spot in Karl’s backcourt rotation:
The Warriors pushed the lead to 16 with just under 4 1/2 minutes left in the fourth on one of the prettiest sequences of ball movement you’ll see this season, capped by the kind of “it ain’t bragging if you can back it up” cockiness that Curry seems to exude when he’s feeling it:
After a scramble for an offensive rebound, center Andrew Bogut kicks the ball out to Thompson, who fires back to Curry on the left wing. Steph resets, then quickly sprints toward the middle of the floor, turning Thompson’s walk to the left wing into a brush screen. Three defenders converge on Curry, who flips a no-look, left-handed, behind-the-back pass to Green at the top of the key.
As Gay races to close out on him, Green whips the ball to Thompson. As Marco Belinelli and Rajon Rondo turn their attention to him, Klay swings the ball to the left corner, where — surprise, surprise! — Curry has found himself all alone, wide open, after continuing his drive through the paint under the basket, out of bounds and, apparently, out of sight.
Speaking of out of sight: after releasing the shot, Steph turned his back to the ball while it was still in flight to talk some trash to the Kings bench before making his way back on defense:
To their credit, the Kings walked through Steph’s haymaker, canning 3-pointers on three straight possessions after Curry’s bomb and cutting the deficit to five at 118-113 on a Gay dunk with 2:59 remaining. That’s as close as they’d get, though, as Curry would put the game away by unleashing some evil crossovers on Rondo — who stayed in Steph’s shirt about as well as you can ask — before stepping back and draining a foot-on-the-line jumper with 27.4 seconds left:
Even with Cousins scoring 33 points with 10 rebounds in his 30-plus foul-trouble-plagued minutes, Gay adding 23 points and nine boards, and reserves Belinelli, Darren Collison and rookie Willie Cauley-Stein combining for 39 points off the bench, Sacramento just didn’t have the firepower or staying power to upend the sweet-shooting champs. The Warriors shot 56.3 percent from the field as a team, including a collective 19-for-37 mark from 3-point range, and notched assists on 35 of their 49 baskets in the win.
The victory gives Golden State a 3 1/2-game lead over the idle 32-6 Spurs for the best record in the NBA and the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. Holding off Kawhi Leonard, LaMarcus Aldridge, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and the rest of Gregg Popovich’s deep, talented crew won’t be easy; in fact, keeping that San Antonio squad at arms’ length will probably require some superhuman efforts. Luckily, the Dubs employ the scariest and perhaps best basketball player in the world, whose Saturday night explosion offered any who needed it a reminder of just what kind of havoc he can wreak on the opposition.
More NBA coverage:
– – – – – – –
Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
Stay connected with Ball Don’t Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, “Like” BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
