CURRY TOO HOT
Superstar guard leads third-quarter barrage, finishes with 38 points in yet another rout
All-Star’s 38 trump Wall’s 30 in second straight loss.
The Rockets had gotten themselves back in a game, having learned the route after a dreadful second quarter the night before.
They had, however, yet to have Stephen Curry offer a reminder of their bad old days.
For all that had changed since the Rockets and Warriors’ postseason clashes, Curry had not.
Curry hit the Rockets with a vintage blitz, scoring 18 of his 38 points in a third-quarter romp that took over the game and sent the Warriors to a 125109 run, giving the Rockets losses in both games of a back-to-back and in 14 of their past 15 road games.
The Rockets did recover a bit from Curry’s run. John Wall hit from the rim to the mid-range to the 3-point line in consecutive possessions to bring the Rockets to within 11 with five and a half minutes remaining.
Wall, who had 30 points with seven assists, had kept the Rockets in it in the fourth quarter as D.J. Augustin had in the third on his way to 19 points, his most with the Rockets.
When Wall passed to Kelly Olynyk for a 3-pointer, the Rockets were down 116-107 with 2:40 remaining.
The run ended there. After a Draymond Green turnover, Green intercepted a Wall pass for a cutting Christian Wood. Juan Toscano-Anderson put in a pair of free throws. A Curry layup and Toscano-Anderson dunk clinched it.
The Warriors had scored too easily for too long, making 53.8 percent of their shots, becoming the sixth Rockets opponent in the past eight games to score 118 points or more. Christian Wood and Olynyk each had 18 points, but that was not enough to keep up with the Warriors while getting a combined 46 points from Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins.
Curry, however, was not through with the Rockets, swishing a long 3-pointer to remind them how things had gotten out of hand.
The Rockets did little to stop the Warriors from the start, but they got away with that when they shot well for a quarter. Treating Warriors fast breaks like spectators at the Indy 500, however, did not seem to be a strategy built to last.
The Warriors can be an effective fast break team, averaging 13.8 points on the break per game, enough to rank 10th in the NBA. They scored 17 on the break in just the first quarter, 22 by halftime.
All those layups not only staked the Warriors to a slim lead in the first quarter when the Rockets uncharacteristically made 6 of 14 3s, it seemed to get nearly everyone in rhythm to burn the Rockets’ step-slow defense on the way to a 65-48 halftime lead.
Wiggins especially had his way with the Rockets with easy drives to the rim and the mid-range, scoring 19 first-half points with Poole scoring 14. Between them, they made 14 of 17 shots and all three of their 3-pointers in the half. But the Rockets might have been able to handle even that, or at least kept things close had the offense not crumbled in the second quarter for the second consecutive night.
The Rockets made just 6 of 19 shots, hitting just one of the eight 3-pointers they put up in the quarter, even missing half their 10 shots from the line. As with the collapse in Los Angeles, the more they missed and the more points they allowed on the other end, the less they moved the ball as they had been in their good start.
They seemed far removed from that when the Warriors’ lead reached 20 early in the second half.
But they did know from experience that bad stretches could be worse and can be overcome.
The problem with trying to come back from down 20 on Saturday, as if there were not enough obvious pitfalls, was that Curry was just beginning to loosen up.
The Rockets recovered a bit, had an 11-2 scoring surge with Wood and Jae’Sean Tate scoring inside before Wall hit a 3, and Curry seemed to notice.
He scored the Warriors’ next 18 points in a four-anda-half-minute burst, giving him a 21-point quarter and the Warriors a 19-point lead.
The Rockets hung around to a longshot chance. But as with their fourth-quarter rally the night before, it always seemed a matter of time before they’d get hit with another barrage, having gone from playing one of the all-time best 3-point shooting teams to the best 3-point shooter.