Warriors win before Curry’s return
DENVER >> In what could be their last game before Stephen Curry returns, it would have been easy for the Warriors to get caught looking ahead.
But in a 116-100 road win over the Nuggets on Tuesday, an engaged Warriors team used impressive ball movement, a flurry of 3-pointers and a timely shimmy to set the stage for the two-time MVP’s potential return.
After getting out to a quick 8-0 lead, Golden State took a onepoint lead into the second quarter. However, forward Paul Millsap’s turnaround jumper capped a Nuggets run, and the Warriors trailed 58-49 at halftime.
Denver quickly extended its lead to 15 at the start of the second half, but Golden State answered with a 33-18 run to close the quarter, capped by guard Jordan Poole’s pair of 3-pointers, the last of which gave the Warriors (14-48) a one-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.
As Poole approached the Warriors’ bench, he celebrated with a Curry-like shimmy, conjuring an image the Warriors have missed for all but four games this season.
With forward Draymond Green (left knee soreness), center Kevon Looney (left hip soreness) and guard Ky Bowman (right ankle sprain) sidelined, the Warriors had only nine players after signing guard Chasson Randle to a 10-day contract Tuesday morning.
Golden State’s 32nd different starting lineup of the season — guards Damion Lee and Mychal Mulder, forwards Juan ToscanoAnderson and Andrew Wiggins and center Marquese Chriss — was led by Wiggins’ 22 points on 9-for-16 shooting, 10 assists and five rebounds in 34 minutes, but it was Poole and the rest of the bench that gave the Warriors the edge.
Helping outscore the Nuggets bench 51-26, forward Eric Paschall had 22 points on 8-for-13 shooting, five rebounds and five assists while Poole finished with 15 points on 4-for-7 shooting (4 for 6 from 3-point range) and six assists.
Defensively, the Warriors held the Nuggets (41-20) to 3 of 20 from the 3-point line while, on offense, they themselves made 18 3-pointers — the most since Feb. 1 — and recorded 31 assists.
The win is a signature one, taking down a team with the second-best record in the Western Conference and earning the team’s second win in three games.
With Curry hopeful to return on Thursday against the Raptors at Chase Center, he will do so to a team much different than the one he left when he broke a bone in his left hand on Oct. 30.
Poole, no longer struggling in his rookie season, will continue to shoot and pass confidently, Paschall will remain a powerful scoring option and Wiggins will learn to play off his new teammate.
Curry’s presence won’t do much to change the fate of this lottery-bound season but, if Tuesday’s win showed anything, it is that this team is committed to playing admirably through this process.
• Warriors head coach Steve Kerr was encouraged by the feedback from Santa Cruz after Curry scrimmaged with the team’s G League affiliate on Monday, and said a return Thursday is “definitely a possibility.”
“I heard everything went well and I’m happy that he got a really good scrimmage in,” Kerr said Tuesday, before the Warriors played in Denver. “The physicality was the main thing for him. To be able to go up and down and feel the screens and the bumps, the bruises, all that stuff. … All good signs.”
On Monday, Curry participated in a 5-on-5 scrimmage in Santa Cruz — his first since suffering a broken bone in his left hand against Phoenix on Oct. 30.
Curry, who did not travel with the Warriors to Denver, will meet with Golden State’s staff today.
• For three days, Randle did not dare leave his apartment. It wasn’t worth the risk. Afterall, the longer he watched the local Chinese news station, the more deaths caused by the coronavirus were reported.
On Tuesday, Randle signed a 10-day contract with the Warriors, concluding a complicated process for the former Stanford guard to return stateside.
After Randle’s agent told him the Chinese Basketball Association would be suspending play indefinitely on Feb. 1 due to the novel virus, Randle decided to try to get back into the NBA.
After urgently organizing his trip back to the Bay Area, he boarded a flight and was back by Jan. 26. But for those three days leading up to the flight, Randle holed up in his room and avoided contact with the outside world. He ate whatever was left in his freezer, watched TV and browsed the internet until he made his way to the airport.
“We had heard that they could potentially start quarantining cities and shutting off flights,” Randle said. “The last thing I wanted was to be away from my family.”
For a month after his return, Randle worked out to stay in basketball shape. However, because he was still under contract with Tianjin, he ran into several setbacks as he tried to negotiate with FIBA and his CBA team an arrangement for him to play in the NBA.
Though the short-handed Warriors had hoped to sign Randle in time for him to play in Phoenix last week — a game in which they had only eight healthy players available — they had to wait for Randle to gain clearance.