SAN FRANCISCO — This one had all the makings of a “trap game,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said before tipoff Wednesday.
His team was bleary eyed. Their opponents, the Sacramento Kings, were missing their star guard, De’Aaron Fox. It would be easy to overlook this one-off home game sandwiched between trips to New Orleans and Oklahoma City and five more games away from Chase Center. (“It makes zero sense,” Kerr said of the schedule.)
Despite all those factors, together with an off-night for Steph Curry, the Warriors prevailed, 102-101, to earn their first win in front of their home fans, a sellout crowd of 18,064.
“Everything was stacked against us,” Draymond Green said afterward. “It was kind of a perfect storm for us. We knew it wouldn’t be an easy game. But it was good to see us never go away. When everything was going wrong, everybody stood in place and made the necessary plays we needed to make in order to pull the game off.”
With the clock ticking down in the fourth quarter — 7, 6, 5, 4 … — it was Green who had the ball in his hands and needed to make a play. Curry was smothered. But Klay Thompson broke free, jetting to his left, creating just enough space from Davion Mitchell to receive Green’s pass — 3, 2 … — take two dribbles and pull up from the foul line. With two-tenths of a second left, Thompson’s shot swished through the net.
Game over.
It was Thompson’s first game-winning shot since 2018, before surgeries on his Achilles and ACL that cost him two seasons.
“Anytime you hit a game-winner, you’re going to be on cloud nine,” Thompson said. “I feel amazing.”
Thompson finished with 14 points, one of six Warriors to finish in double figures. It took a team-wide effort to hold off a Kings team they were facing for the 13th time since the start of last season (not counting two preseason matchups), who finally managed to slow down Curry with a swarming defensive effort.
Curry turned the ball over seven times, a team-high, and it took until the the 6-minute mark of the second quarter for him to make his second shot from the field. But he finished with a team-high 21 points on 7-of-15 shooting. Down 1 with less than a minute to play, Curry crossed over behind his back and converted an acrobatic go-ahead layup, setting up Thompson’s game-winner after Domantas Sabonis answered with a bank-shot jumper.
Kerr initially motioned for a timeout before the final possession but didn’t make the call in time.
“It worked out,” Kerr said. “If we missed, it would have been a mistake. But he made it, so it was the right decision.”
After their last meeting, a 122-114 Warriors win last Friday in Sacramento, Curry described the relationship between the two Northern California teams, separated by about 90 minutes on I-80, as a “familiarity,” and it showed. They traded leads 12 times.
That’s three wins in a row for the San Francisco side of this “familiarity,” dating back to their seven-game series in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs last season, but Green declined to gloat afterward. They do meet twice more this season, after all.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say we’ve got their number,” Green said. “That’s a team that’s trying to learn how to get over the hump. We know how to get over the hump. In theory, we should have their number. Their job is to get over (the hump). Sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes two, sometimes it never happens. But that’s well-coached team, they got great players on that side and they’re really putting it together and changing the outlook of that organization.”
In absence of a dominating effort from Curry — a season-low in scoring and a season-high in turnovers — Golden State kept it close, never trailing by more than 11, with contributions from its supporting cast. Six players finished in double figures, including newcomer Dario Saric, who knocked down a couple clutch 3-point shots while turning in his best game as a Warrior, finishing with 15 points.
Andrew Wiggins held down the fort in the first half, scoring 12 of his season-high 14 points before halftime.
Jonathan Kuminga, who was a game-time decision with a right knee contusion, contributed 12, including a 6-point swing in the second quarter where he knocked down a 3-pointer on one end of the floor, intercepted a pass, ran the length of the floor and converted an and-one opportunity on the fast break.
Thompson’s last-second jumper gave him 14 points, while Green contributed 13 to go with a team-high nine assists.
The Warriors had outscored their first four opponents in the third quarter by 47 points (142-95), including a 12-point margin that allowed them to pull away last Friday, but had the tables turned on them. Taking a 56-55 advantage into halftime, the Warriors managed only 18 points in the 12 minutes after intermission, matching their lowest-scoring period of the season.
Meanwhile, Sacramento scored the first eight points of the third quarter, building its biggest lead of the game when Keegan Murray sank a fadeaway jumper to cap a 13-2 run that made it 69-58. But Golden State responded with a 13-3 run of its own, Saric sinking a second-chance 3-pointer that electrified the sellout crowd and forced Mike Brown to call timeout. Picking and popping at the top of the key, Saric sank another 3-ball out of the timeout on a feed from Paul to even the score at 74.
Sacramento scored the next five points to close the quarter, setting up the Warriors’ fourth-quarter comeback.
“Every time you get into a situation where you have to close a game and get stops and execute on offense, it’s a chance to build some confidence and learn some of the things you have to run to get open, how connected you have to be defensively,” Kerr said. “So, good experience for our team here early in the year.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com