Long before tipoff on Tuesday night, Stephen Curry swished his routine tunnel shot on the second try. Once the game began, the two-time Most Valuable Player stood along the bench anxiously waiting for his turn, shaking his legs and clapping his hands with nervous energy and anticipation.
Then — mouthpiece dangling, of course — Curry finally entered at the 4 minute, 20 second mark of the first quarter to a roaring ovation from the Oracle Arena crowd and immediately got to work.
He knocked down a three-pointer from the left wing 11 seconds later and was off and running in Golden State’s 121-116 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans.
Photo: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY
“It was an eternity it felt like, for sure,” Curry said. “When the lights come back on after the starting lineups you’re usually in the go kind of mind frame. I had to kind of pace myself and be patient with it. It seemed like it took forever, but it was a good feeling to get back out on the floor and just let loose and have fun.”
Curry came off the bench to score 28 points in a triumphant return from a knee injury and nearly six weeks off, as the Warriors held off Anthony Davis and the pesky Pelicans to go ahead 2-0 in the Western Conference semi-finals.
All is right with the Warriors again now that No. 30 is back on the floor — even as a backup.
“It brought a lot of life to the building, a lot of life to our team’s spirit. Pretty fitting for sure,” Draymond Green said of Curry’s immediate three-pointer.
Kevin Durant scored 29 points with a huge three-pointer with 3 minutes, 10 seconds to play, to go with seven assists and six rebounds in Golden State’s franchise-record 14th consecutive post-season victory at Oracle Arena.
Green contributed 20 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds while battling Davis on both ends all night.
Davis finished with 25 points and 15 rebounds, while Jrue Holiday had 24 points, eight rebounds and eight assists for the Pelicans, who also got 22 points and 12 assists from Rajon Rondo.
“It was tough,” Davis said. “We were in it the whole game.”
Andre Iguodala converted a snazzy three-point play with 6 minutes, 41 seconds left, when he flipped the ball up and it came back down and through the net as he was fouled by Rondo, then Golden State pulled away.
The best-of-seven series resumes with Game 3 tomorrow at New Orleans.
Curry shot eight for 15 with five three-pointers and grabbed seven rebounds in 27 minutes. He let it fly for a 30-foot three-pointer in the closing minute of the third.
“He’s going to score,” New Orleans coach Alvin Gentry said.
The Warriors were focused on keeping their edge after a blowout victory in Game 1.
Just the energy Curry brings helped that cause. The whole place came alive when he made his first appearance on the floor.
“That was a special moment when Steph checked into the game,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said.
The game had its quarrelsome moments.
Curry made a bounce pass in transition to Iguodala late in the third and Solomon Hill was hit with a flagrant one for grabbing Iguodala’s neck area as he shot. That came 14 seconds after a double-technical against Davis and Green after they got tangled and rolled around and over each other.
“I live for playoff basketball. It’s the most fun time of the year for me,” Green said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier