ORACLE ARENA, OAKLAND, CA — As Tuesday’s night loss came to a close for the Golden State Warriors against the Memphis Grizzlies, tying the second-round series at one game apiece, newly-minted MVP Stephen Curry showed signs of wear.
With just 35 seconds remaining, down by nine points, i.e., three possessions in #SplashBrothers-speak, Curry found himself isolated on the left wing beyond the arc against Memphis power forward Zach Randolph, but the swagger was not quite there. Curry, who had been re-inserted into the game with as much as 9:29 left in the fourth quarter, seemed to have been sapped of his energy, especially with Grizzlies’ center Marc Gasol lurking nearby.
As Steph probed around with a crossover bounce or two on that perimeter, he drew Gasol, then finally launched a tired-looking three-pointer from the 23’9″ arc. The ball sailed harmless out of bounds to the baseline, about 22’9″ away. It was an airball, his eighth miss of the night from downtown on just two makes.
With 19.9 seconds remaining, Curry had the ball again, this time at the top, and his shot bounced off the backboard, almost two feet to the left of the rim. It wasn’t close.
Those were shots with the gas tank on empty, but they were just symptoms of the greater disease of the night.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, for one, was not going to use all of the MVP hoopla — including a near-hour acceptance speech by Curry yesterday — over the past 48 hours as an excuse.
“It shouldn’t be, but historically in this league, you see this kind of stuff once in awhile,” Kerr told reporters after the game. “I thought we lost our poise tonight. That was the biggest issue. We were in such a rush. You know, it’s a 48-minute game. It takes an eternity to win an NBA game.”
It must have felt like an eternity between Games 1 and 2 for Curry.
“It was weird — obviously, my first time experiencing it, as well for my teammates,” said Curry at the post-game press conference. “You want to stay in the moment and kind of stay focused on what the task is during the game, but the extra-curricular stuff with MVP and all that, the celebration, the change of routine, to lead up to a game, it’s different.”
“We were too emotional,” Kerr added. “We were too quick with our intention to score, instead of just moving the ball and setting good screens. Everyone was trying to do everything frantically on their own.”
“When we started the game, we all felt like we were ready to go, but it has been a long 48 hours,” said Curry. “A lot of words, a lot of pictures, a lot of celebrating the accomplishment. We didn’t get it done tonight, but we’ll be able to bounce back and the rest over the next three days will be huge, to kind of rejuvenate ourselves, understand what we need to do to get a win in Memphis, and try to make it happen.”
“We’ve just got to be better,” Draymond Green said in the locker room. “We know the things that we’ve got to get better at. We’ll take tomorrow off, get some rest, come back Thursday, watch some film, and get ready for Saturday.”
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via AP)
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