The Warriors held off a charging Clippers squad and picked up a 134-127 victory on Thursday in their first game after the All-Star break.
TEAM LEADERS
The Dubs led by as many as 18 in the first half and entered the fourth quarter up by 10, but the Clippers chipped away from their deficit to make it a two-point game with less than two-and-a-half minutes remaining. But then Curry took on the role of closer, knocking down back-to-back 3-pointers to give the Dubs some separation.
Curry finished with 44 points, his third highest output of the season and second highest against the Clippers. Kevin Durant added 21 and Klay Thompson scored 17 of his 19 points in the first half as the Dubs improved to 45-14 on the season.
CURRY COOKS
Curry hit three of his four 3-point attempts in the first half, but it wasn’t until the third quarter where he really got it going. The All-Star captain shot 6-for-7 from the floor in the period for 18 points, and he followed that with another dominant stretch in the fourth quarter in which he scored or assisted on nine of 11 points during a key stretch in which the Dubs put the game out of reach.
Curry wound up shooting 14-for-19 from the field and 8-for-11 on 3-pointers, while also tallying 10 assists for his fifth double-double of the season. He had 29 of his 44 points in the second half, continuing a trend of his outstanding play against the Clippers – he had 45 points against them back on January 6 in Los Angeles.
KLAY 10K
While Curry closed out the game in impressive fashion, it was Klay Thompson who had the Dubs off to a hot start. The Splash Brother made his first seven shot attempts and didn’t miss until there were less than three minutes left in the second quarter. In the process, Thompson became the 10th player in franchise history to reach 10,000 points in a Warriors uniform.
Thompson’s hot start helped, at least for one game, undo a troubling trend of falling behind early. As opposed to trailing by 10-plus in the opening frame, the Dubs led for almost the entire game, never trailing by more than a point, and took an 11-point lead into the second quarter. The Splash Brother’s hot start to the game proved to be critical, as the Dubs were outscored in the game after the first quarter.
BUZZER BEATER CITY
The first, second and third quarters all resulted in shots going in before the light. Curry ended the opening quarter in dramatic fashion, knocking down a shot from near half court. The Clippers’ Danilo Gallinari made his half-court shot to end the half and Lou Williams hit a tough shot in traffic to beat the buzzer in the third quarter.
HELD HIM UNDER 50
Last time the Warriors played the Clippers, Lou Williams had a career-high 50 points. This time, the Dubs held him to 21 points on 7-for-17 shooting. Williams, however, got hot in the second half, getting the Clippers, who had won seven of their last 10 games heading into the All-Star break, to within two points on multiple occasions in the fourth quarter.
LESSON LEARNED
With the win, the Warriors improved to 7-1 this season against teams they lost to in their previous matchup. That one loss came against the Thunder, and the Dubs will look to rectify that defeat on Saturday when they host Oklahoma City in a primetime matchup (5:30 p.m.) on ABC. FIND TICKETS