In loss to Hornets, Steph Curry tried to play ‘hero ball.’ Who said so? Steph Curry
Steph Curry’s second homecoming in two months didn’t go nearly as well as his first.
Curry and his Golden State Warriors were upset, 120-113, in overtime Saturday night by the short-handed but inspired Charlotte Hornets.
Curry scored 31 points to lead the defending NBA champions. But he couldn’t hit a potential game-winning shot in the last second of regulation and was annoyed with himself later for settling for a tough three-pointer on the attempt instead of driving the ball.
“I can get a way better look than that,” Curry said. “I got wrapped up in trying to ‘hero ball’ my way to a hometown buzzer-beater.”
After Curry missed that shot and the Warriors blew a four-point lead in the final 55 seconds of regulation, it was all Hornets in overtime before a sellout crowd of 19,079 at the Spectrum Center. Charlotte (3-3) mostly shot layups and free throws in OT, looking like the younger, fresher team despite the circumstances behind P.J. Washington’s 31 points.
To say this was a surprising victory for the Hornets would be an understatement. It resembled, in many respects, the Carolina Panthers’ 21-3 win over defending Super Bowl Tampa Bay six days before.
Charlotte had lost by 20 points Friday night to a winless Orlando team. The Hornets were without their three top scorers from last season for this game — LaMelo Ball and Terry Rozier due to injuries and Miles Bridges due to pending domestic violence charges in California. And Charlotte was playing on the second night of a back-to-back, while Golden State didn’t have to play on Friday.
Yet, as Warriors coach Steve Kerr said: “I think we were tired. We had some really poor defensive possessions…. Just didn’t have much left in the tank offensively.”
And the Warriors did look like that for the majority of the time in OT — like the slow team, the tired team, the one that was allowing too many layups. Kerr said Golden State really had needed to win the game in regulation. To try and do that, it understandably went to Curry, the four-time NBA champion and two-time NBA MVP, for its last two shots.
But Charlotte played beautifully on two straight defensive possessions. Curry used picks twice in a row to try and get free. On the first, Washington switched onto him, and Curry tried to shoot over the 6-foot-7 forward on a three-pointer with 34 seconds left. He missed.
Dennis Smith Jr. then scored on a driving layup to tie the game for Charlotte.
At 107-all, Curry then held the ball for the final shot. But after trying to dribble himself free, he again missed a three-pointer against tight defense from Smith — the former N.C. State standout — at the buzzer. It was that shot Curry was bemoaning afterward.
“I understood how Dennis was guarding me the whole game and he’s probably not going to just let me size up a three,” said Curry, who played nearly 39 minutes and had 11 rebounds to go along with his 31 points, but was only 3-for-13 from three-point range for the game. “There’s so much room to go by — maybe draw a crowd and kick it or get all the way to the basket. It’s a pretty simple play in that respect, knowing how he was pressuring the ball.”
But Curry, widely considered the best shooter in basketball history, tried the contested three-pointer instead and missed. Golden State’s bench deflated, the Hornets exulted and Charlotte would end up beating the Warriors for the fourth straight time in Charlotte over the past three-plus years.
Curry’s first homecoming of the past two months had come Aug. 31, when he returned to Davidson College as a global icon and college graduate. Curry got his number 30 retired that day and went into the school’s hall of fame, but most importantly he picked up the degree he had earned 13 years after leaving Davidson a year early to pursue his NBA dreams. The ceremony was held before about 5,000 Davidson fans and Curry’s entire family, and it felt a lot like Curry was both the graduate and the commencement speaker.
That day at Davidson was a well-deserved Curry love-fest, and he was enjoying himself so much that he led the crowd in a “Sweet Caroline” singalong at one point.
Saturday night was a little like that to start. There were thousands of Curry No. 30 jerseys in the crowd. But as the Hornets continued to lead and the crowd sensed the upset might happen, the chants for Hornet baskets far outweighed those for Golden State.
By the end, the Warriors were considering whether this was just a blip — they think it is — or something more.
Said Golden State’s Draymond Green of the team’s mistakes: “It’s not quite something that I’m overly concerned about. But we can’t keep talking about it. We need to do it. Six games in, they’re (the public) going to over-react. But we’ve also got to build good habits… I don’t think anybody’s going to be willing to wait much longer.”
In the meantime, the Hornets were celebrating their best win of the young season, one in which they were able to beat the most famous basketball player to ever grow up in Charlotte at his own game.
