Steph Curry loved what he saw from Cam Newton. From Warriors vs. Hornets? Not so much
Steph Curry’s one-night-only annual homecoming to Charlotte started off beautifully. He had time before he took the court Sunday night for Golden State to watch his beloved Carolina Panthers play the first quarter of their game at Arizona. That allowed him to see Cam Newton’s two early touchdowns.
“In true Cam fashion, on his first touch he gets a score and then on his second touch, he throws a touchdown,” Curry said later. “It was kind of surreal watching him…. I love his vibe and his energy, all the way around.”
But things went downhill from there for Curry, whose Warriors then took the court and lost to the suddenly hot Charlotte Hornets, 106-102, Sunday night before a sellout crowd of 19,559 in Charlotte.
Curry suffered through a 3-of-13 shooting night from three-point range against Charlotte and, he admitted later, took too many difficult shots from long range while trying too hard to hit “daggers.” Curry still ended up with 24 points and 10 assists, but the Hornets got the win to complete a glorious night for Charlotte’s NBA and NFL teams.
Golden State had the best record in the NBA coming in at 11-1 but only scored 14 points in the final quarter. The Hornets’ win was keyed by excellent team defense and, at the end by Terry Rozier.
Rozier had nine fourth-quarter points and an incredible leap to steal a jump ball away from Draymond Green — who is five inches taller than Rozier — with 15.3 seconds to go and Charlotte clinging to a two-point lead.
Green said later the official was “still talking” when he threw the ball and so Green wasn’t completely prepared to jump. Still, Green said, he should have won the jump ball regardless and “that’s on me.”
Curry said much the same thing after he played the Hornets on Golden State’s annual trip to Charlotte for what is always one of the toughest Hornet tickets all year. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Curry jerseys in the stands Sunday.
Curry has had bad luck playing against Charlotte, though, in the Queen City the past few years, missing three of the past four contests due to injury or illness. That included a brief scare in February when he got sick just before tip-off. So the former Charlotte Christian and Davidson star badly wanted to put on a show and also to win in front of the hometown crowd.
“This is always special,” Curry said of returning to Charlotte. “There’s no secret about that. I saw a lot of Davidson red and Warrior blue (in the crowd)…. But we’ve got to be a little more thoughtful on how to create shots. I got roped into it a little bit, just trying to go for daggers a couple of times, even though I didn’t really have it (his shooting touch). So, a good learning lesson.”
Curry did have some ridiculously good moments, as he always does. He threw a 40-foot, no-look, behind-his-head pass for a fastbreak layup. He also banked in a 37-footer at the third-quarter buzzer. But in general the Hornets swarmed him well, with Cody Martin defending Curry most of the time late in the game as Gordon Hayward sat on the bench in crunch time.
Said Hornets coach James Borrego, whose 8-7 Charlotte team has now won three in a row: “I thought our team was really locked in on Steph, and they did a great job of giving him nothing easy.”
Golden State coach Steve Kerr said of Curry: “They were all over Steph.... It was not his best game obviously. He struggled from the floor. He fought and competed like crazy… And 3-for-13 (from three-point range) — I thought he took a lot of difficult ones and just didn’t get the rhythm. But a lot of that was our offense, which never found the rhythm, either.”
In the fourth quarter, Curry shot only 1-for-8 and was 0-for-4 from three-point range. In an enormously competitive game that included 14 ties and 25 lead changes, he couldn’t pull the Warriors to the top of the mountain like the three-time NBA champion and two-time NBA Most Valuable Player so often does.
It was the Hornets, instead, who followed the Panthers’ lead from earlier in the day. Carolina played the NFL’s No. 1 team by record and won. The Hornets then played the NBA’s No. 1 team and won.
“I saw the Panthers and they were playing the Cardinals and I think they were 8-1,” said Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball, who had 21 points, seven rebounds and five assists Sunday night. “And I’m like ‘Dang, this kind of lines up, I feel like we might win too.’ And we won. So, yup. Big day. Keep it going.”
Curry could still feel good about the Panthers’ win, at least, and Newton, whom he has always admired. Curry spoke about “how weird it was, just watching Panther football without him (Newton) the last couple years.”
Continued Curry: “Obvously, I wish him the best. And obviously, they got the win, so there’s some life that he breathed into that building. I’m rooting for him.”
