Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff called a timeout with 10:15 left in the fourth quarter on Thursday night. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop the Steph Curry deluge in Cleveland.
A few minutes earlier, the Cavs held all the momentum. The Warriors limped into the final period trailing by 13 after their worst third-quarter performance of the season. Then the chef started cooking.
Curry splashed a pair of early 3-pointers in the fourth quarter before Bickerstaff tried to stall momentum with a timeout. It didn’t help. Steph promptly splashed another 3-pointer on the Dubs’ next possession after a Cavs turnover. And it was just the beginning.
The young, undermanned Cleveland squad eventually succumbed to the unbending will of the league’s top team. Golden State rattled off a 17-0 run to start the fourth quarter and worked its way to a 104-89 win.
“It was just the defensive end,” Steph Curry told NBC Sports Bay Area after the game. “Obviously, everyone is going to fall in love with my shooting and our ball movement on offense, but the only reason we opened the game up is we went on a 13-0 run and they struggled to score. For 36 minutes we really struggled to get stops and force them into tough looks.”
The Warriors have won ugly this season, but Thursday was an unprecedented salvage job.
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Curry finished the game with 40 points on 15-of-27 shooting, including 9-of-16 from 3-point land. It marked his fourth contest in the past six games hitting nine 3-pointers. He scored 20 of his points in the final period.
"With Steph on the floor, you always have a chance," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after the game.
Curry needed to put the offense on his back Thursday, as Andrew Wiggins (0-for-5) and Jordan Poole (1-for-5) struggled from 3-point land. Outside of Curry, the starters combined for just 26 points.
"We needed [Curry] to get going like that and he did," said Draymond Green, who scored four points and dished out 14 assists. "We were able to come out on top. That's why he is who he is and that's why he's the MVP of this league."
The bench did its part, though, as Nemanja Bjelica and Gary Payton II sparked the team in the first half after a sluggish stint by the starters. In the fourth quarter, Juan Toscano-Anderson responded from a poor third quarter by grabbing three quick, high-energy rebounds. Damion Lee chipped in with 11 massive points in the fourth quarter. Toscano-Anderson finished with seven points, five rebounds and three assists in 16 huge minutes off the bench.
"This is going to be the Warrior way this whole year,” Curry said. "We got 13 guys right now, Klay and Wise. Everybody can play. And everybody can play at a high level."
The Warriors ended up outsourcing the Cavs 36-8 in the fourth quarter. Curry didn’t cool down until Bickerstaff called another timeout with 1:24 left. By that point, the Warriors held a 13-point lead.
Now they’re 13-2.
