Curry’s brilliant showing wasted
Three takeaways from the Warriors’ 116-109 loss to the Miami Heat (25-24) Thursday night at AmericanAirlines Arena to drop Golden State to 23-25:
AGAIN, STEPHEN CURRY WAS BRILLIANT AND, AGAIN, THE WARRIORS LOST >> Curry scored 36 points on 9 of 19 shooting, including 5 of 11 from 3-point range, made all 13 of his free throws and had 11 rebounds and three assists. He made a pair of 3-pointers and three free throws in the final 1:45 to cut Miami’s 13-point lead to six with 49.5 seconds to go, but when he air-balled a 3-pointer with 12.2 seconds left Golden State ran out of time.
“Steph was amazing down the stretch,” head coach Steve Kerr said. “Always competes, always fights and I thought he was tremendous.”
Not only did the Warriors squander a great game from Curry, but also strong performances from Andrew Wiggins (23 points, eight rebounds and four assists) and Draymond Green (16 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists and four steals).
The rest of the Warriors struggled against a deep Heat team playing on the second night of a back-to-back set. Jimmy Butler finished with 22 points, six rebounds, eight assists and four steals while Miami also got scoring contributions from Tyler Herro (20 points), Duncan Robinson (21 points) and Bam Adebayo (19 points). Former Warrior Andre Iguodala scored all 10 of his points in the final period, including on a breakaway dunk that punctuated a 10-0 run to put the Heat up 12 with 7:22 remaining.
This lack of depth and support for Curry, in the midst of his seventh All-Star season, is one of many things that have kept the Warriors from maturing into a bona fide playoff team. TURNOVERS AND FOULS >> For a game in which both teams shot
well (58.6% true shooting for Golden State and 60.9% true shooting for Miami), the difference was the 52 points the Heat scored off turnovers and at the freethrow line.
“Thisgamewasneverreally out of reach,” Kerr said, “but we never had control of it because our habits and our decision-making were not good.”
The Heat scored 27 points off the Warriors’ 20 turnovers. There were many culprits — mainly Miami’s bothersome length and young players getting out-muscled by the Heat’s brute strength — but rookie James Wiseman, in particular, struggled with five turnovers. This is particularly hurtful given he had just one assist and missed four of his five shots. Compare that to Green having four turnovers, and the Warriors can live with that when he has eight assists and scores efficiently on 7-of-13 shooting.
Meanwhile, Golden State’s season-long issue with fouling persisted with 26 fouls, many of them on jump shooters and the most committed since Jan. 25.
“We’ve just got to be smarter,” Curry said. “Overall, there’s not just a consistent pattern. It’s just bad fouling, and we’ve got to fix it.”
On the season, the Warriors commit the thirdmost fouls and turn the ball over at the seventhhighest rate per game. For a team with a top-10 defense and one of the best scorers in the league, this is what is keeping them from climbing the Western Conference standings.
“We’re right in the thick of it, obviously, and 24 games is actually a lot when you’re talking about being within a game either in front or behind of teams that are in your group,” Kerr said of the Warriors, who are 10th in the West. “There should be a sense of urgency because this is the stretch run, but there is time for us to get it going.
“But it’s just cheap talk if we don’t actually play like it. We can’t turn it over 20 times and we can’t keep fouling jump shooters. We work on this stuff every day, and we have not been able to execute in those areas and it’s very frustrating.”
When asked about solutions, players use phrases such as “locking in more” and “focus.”
CURRY’S LINGERING PAIN >> With about a minute left in the first quarter, Curry stepped in front of Victor Oladipo to take a charge under the basket. Curry fell backward onto his tailbone and immediately reached for his backside in obvious pain.
He missed five straight games with the injury,