It’s no secret the importance of Steph Curry to the Warriors offense. No denying Draymond Green’s distributor, facilitator and defensive maven. When one is in a purple T-shirt and the other in a track suit, it’s never more apparent.
Next to them, Klay Thompson sat and watched and thought about the next time he would be on the court, playing alongside them. It will happen within weeks, maybe days. But Thursday night in New Orleans, all the three of them could do was sit and watch a 101-96 loss.
Faced with at least one more game before their title-winning trio is together again, the Warriors fell in for the second straight night, their first time losing consecutive games since last season. Without Curry (bruised quad) and Green (sore hip), they re-inserted Jordan Poole to the starting lineup and relied on Andrew Wiggins’ continued resurgence.
Wiggins, as aggressive as ever, led the way with 21 points. But 49 points off the bench, led by 13 from Jonathan Kuminga and 12 from Damion Lee, couldn’t make up for a team missing two of its top three scoring threats: Curry, who was sitting out, and Poole, who went silent.
Afterward, coach Steve Kerr called it a “great fight.”
“Being shorthanded, the young guys had a good chance to play and experience a pressure-filled game on the road. I thought our young guys gained really valuable experience and fought their way through,” Kerr said. “Just didn’t have enough. The ball didn’t go in enough, obviously. … But I thought we defended and played hard.”
Kuminga and Moses Moody, Golden State’s pair of lottery picks, both saw significant stretches on a shorthanded evening. Moody, who finished with 10 points in 23 minutes, “knows how to play … attacked the rim (and) defended like crazy,” Kerr said.
“A lot of good stuff happened in terms of experience for Kuminga, Moses Moody and Jordan Poole,” Kerr said. “It’s great to feel that type of game with that type of responsibility.”
An exciting sequence from Kuminga at the end gave the Warriors a brief glimmer of hope, but they never regained the lead they lost in the final moments of the third quarter.
Golden State led 70-67 with 1:20 left until the end of the quarter after Moses Moody earned a pair of free throws. But the Pelicans responded with three quick baskets that kicked off a 20-8 run that flipped the score to 87-78 by the 8:33 mark of the fourth quarter and decided the game.
It took New Orleans, the second-worst team in the Western Conference, two stretches to erase an 11-point lead the Warriors built in the first half. New Orleans may have started the season 1-12, but it has now split its past 26 games.
Wiggins scored the Warriors’ final three baskets of the first half. But more than 3 minutes separated the final two, during a stretch the Warriors let an 11-point first-half lead slip away. New Orleans mounted a 21-9 run in the final 6:37 of the first half, including a 9-0 stretch between Wiggins buckets, to take a 47-46 lead into intermission.
Otto Porter Jr. got the start in Green’s place and gave the Warriors their first 3-pointer after missing their first five, igniting a burst of two more from Wiggins and Nemanja Bjelica. The Warriors’ 0-for-5 start proved a better indication of what was to come than the brief barrage that followed.
Golden State missed on 26 of its 33 attempts from 3-point land (21.2%) and, after another off night on Wednesday, is shooting 11-for-59 from distance over its past two games. For the third time in five games, the Warriors were held below 100 points.
Porter, who has stepped into the playmaker role at times this season, including outings of 19 and 20 points in the past five games, managed only one bucket the rest of the way.
Back in the starting lineup, possibly for the final time with Thompson’s return on the horizon, Poole was a prime candidate to step up in Curry’s place.
Prior to Wednesday, the Warriors had played five times with Poole while getting 15 or fewer points from Curry. Those five games are Poole’s five highest point totals of the season, including a season-best 32 on Monday against Miami in his second game back from health and safety protocols.
But for the second straight night, Poole couldn’t hit. He missed his first 10 attempts and finished 3-of-14 for 11 points in Curry’s place in the starting lineup, after taking a backseat with Curry in Wednesday night’s loss (six points; 3-for-8).
“I thought Jordan forced things a little bit,” Kerr said. “I thought there were times where he could’ve made simple plays. He looked anxious to make up for the lack of scoring in the backcourt with Steph out.”
Kuminga delivered a highlight during a first-half run, collecting his own rebound once, then again, and again, and again, until finally his perseverance paid off. Four of his six rebounds came on one possession that ended in two of his 13 points.
Two more of Kuminga’s points came with less than a minute to go: Poole came up with a steal on the inbounds pass and passed to Kuminga, who turned the turnover into two points and pulled the Warriors within two points, 94-91, with 50 ticks left on the clock.
New Orleans’ Brandon Ingram, however, sank two free throws on the following possession and that was as close as the Warriors would come.
Source: www.mercurynews.com