Agony turns to ecstacy
Green outburst ignites epic uprising; Warriors explode for 50 in third
OAKLAND — The Warriors, either rusty or still slumbering from an extended All-Star break, stumbled into a doubledigit halftime hole on Thursday night. The Clippers, so uncompetitive in this matchup recently, were the energized aggressors.
But then, early in the third quarter, Draymond Green erupted after a foul, yelling at the referee and then Steve Kerr, which charged up both the arena and the team. The Warriors, as unconventional as it may have been, suddenly had life.
And, with it, they delivered to the Clippers a familiar blowout feeling: a 123-113 final, boosted by an amazing 50-point third quarter after the Green tirade. It was the Clippers’ 10th straight loss to the Warriors.
With 8:11 left in the third quarter, the Clippers led 6661. In transition, Blake Griffin crashed into Green. The two went tumbling. Green was called for the foul. After seeing the ruling, Green bounced up, walking away but screaming in the direction of official Scott Foster — a past Warrior nemesis — and was drilled with the technical.
“I wasn’t arguing, all I said was ‘How?’” Green said. “How many arguments have you got in your life when you only said ‘How?’”
Earlier in the day, Kerr and Green had a discussion at the practice facility about limiting technical fouls and easing up on referees the rest of the season. Green was calm much of the night, but the third quarter foul and then technical combo set him off.
“I think he was frustrated be-
cause he got the technical while walking away,” Kerr said.
The technical only infuriated Green more. So Kevin Durant and the Warriors tried to play peacemaker, holding Green back and subbing him out of the game. But Green just became increasingly agitated, yelling at Kerr as assistant Mike Brown pulled him away and planted him with enforcer David West at the end of the bench.
“He came to me like: ‘Is this how you want me to act?’” Kerr said of Green shouting at him. “It was emotional. It was fiery. But it was Draymond. We laughed about it afterward.”
Just as West was trying to calm a stewing Green, the ball was put back in play and Durant nailed a 3. Green turned that fuming anger toward wild celebration, shouting and yelling toward Durant as the arena whipped into a frenzy.
The Warriors suddenly had a bounce. They got a defensive stop, pushed it upcourt and Durant stepped into another 3. Swish. The bench players, so fired up by the sequence, spilled so far onto the court in celebration that Foster hit them with a technical foul.
“Then we got a tech for celebrating?” Green shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Fun night though.”
It gave the Clippers an extra point, but didn’t stop the momentum. Durant led off the scoring barrage, backing up a sequence of three straight 3s with a powerful drive and soar- ing dunk. In the first eight minutes of the third quarter, he had 15 points on 6of-6 shooting.
Durant then turned the baton over to Curry, who happily delivered the Clippers dagger after dagger through the heart.
With 3:36 left in the third quarter, Curry hit a 23-footer. With 3:06 left, he nailed a 25-footer. Six points in 30 seconds. He’d found a rhythm. Curry followed a layup with a drive and two free throws. Four points in 33 seconds.
Then he followed that on the next possession with a deep 3 from the left wing, plus the foul on Raymond Felton. Four points on one play, giving the Warriors a ridiculous 47 points in the third quarter.
But he wasn’t done. Curry closed the quarter with a deep buzzer-beating 3 from the right wing. It gave him 17 points in the final 3:36 of the third quar- ter and it bumped Golden State to 50 points in one quarter (they only had 49 in the first half). It was the fourth 50-point quarter in the franchise’s history, the first since 1989 and the first in the NBA since the Lakers in 2014.
“Yeah,” Durant said when asked if he’d been a part of a 50-point quarter before. “Sunday. The AllStar game.”
Durant and Curry combined for 35 of those 50 points, making 12 of their 16 shots and nine of their 12 threes.
This season, the Warriors have routinely dominated the third quarter. Thursday was the most extreme example. After beating the Clippers 5025 in the frame — turning a 12-point deficit into a 13-point lead — they have now outscored opponents by 351 points in the third quarter this season. The Spurs are the next closest at plus-177.
And, of course, the Clippers were the sad victims again. Much of the past few weeks, with three impending games against the Warriors, they’ve talked about trying to knock the Warriors off at least once to gain some confidence. They couldn’t.
The Clippers will close the season 0-4 against the Warriors this season — with losses of 17, 46, 13 and 10.