What we learned as Steph Curry's smooth 31 points power Warriors' win over Jazz originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO – Between the Warriors and Utah Jazz, one team was bound to snap a three-game losing streak Monday night at Chase Center.
Luckily for the home fans, the team that found its way back into the win column was the Warriors, beating the Jazz 134-117.
Scoring was spread up and down the Warriors. Steph Curry scored a game-high 31 points on 12-of-24 shooting and now has scored at least 30 points in five of his last six games. The sneaker free agent played in Nikes, the first game he had done so since 2013, rocking a pair of IONESCREW Sabrina 3s with Bay Area native and New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu in the building.
Jimmy Butler scored an efficient 18 points on 8-of-11 shooting, and Buddy Hield dropped a season-high 20 points off the bench on 8-of-13 shooting and 4 of 8 from deep, also adding five rebounds and four assists.
The Jazz began the game ahead 11-0 as the Warriors missed their first six shots, including five 3-pointers. Each team then used its own extended runs in the first half, as the Warriors strung together a spectacular second quarter and very strong third to give them a 22-point lead entering the fourth.
Here are three takeaways from the Warriors’ blowout win.
GP2 Gets The Starting Nod
How did Steve Kerr combat an already-small Warriors team against the much-bigger Jazz on a night where Golden State was without Draymond Green and Al Horford? Putting a 6-foot-2 Gary Payton II on a 7-foot Lauri Markkanen to begin the game, of course.
Payton from the get-go did all the small things (no pun intended) that make him so valuable in certain matchups. He was cutting behind Utah’s defense, grabbing rebounds and keeping the ball moving right away. The Warriors’ first three made shots were all assisted by Payton.
Standing 10 inches shorter than Markkanen and still frustrating him was only one part of Payton’s game. Payton, in 21 minutes, scored nine points, came down with six rebounds and dished a career-high eight assists.
Oh, and Markkanen went just 6 of 15 from the field, making one of his five 3-point attempts.
18-0 Run … Without Steph
The goal when Curry sits is to stay afloat. To keep the game in reach, stay even if possible and win on the margins the best you can. Another way to win the non-Steph minutes is to go on an 18-0 run without him.
And that’s exactly what the Warriors did in the second quarter.
The Warriors entered the second quarter down by nine points, 35-26. They then led 44-35 when Curry came back in at the 7:13 mark, going from trailing by nine points to having a nine-point lead themselves. Points came from four different players: Moody (eight), Butler (four), Quinten Post (three) and Will Richard (three).
Those four players, plus Pat Spencer, were the ones on the floor for the run. A Curry three then made it a 21-0 run, before a Kyle Filipowski three finally ended the Jazz’s scoring drought.
Curry still scored eight points over seven minutes in the second quarter, but it was all about what the Warriors were able to do without him. His teammates scored 33 points in the second quarter, which would have outscored the Jazz by 13.
Message Received
An irate Kerr called a timeout with a little under two minutes left in the first quarter after yet another open 3-pointer made by Jazz guard Keyonte George. Kerr was clapping his hands and letting his team have it. In particular, the message seemed to be aimed at Brandin Podziemski, who tried blaming a teammate for George’s corner three while he guarded nothing but open space.
Defense, on a night where the Warriors didn’t have Green as their savior, was missing in action early on. The Jazz shot 61.9 percent from the field in the first quarter (13 of 21), and went 7 of 10 on threes. George scored 15 points by himself, two fewer than the Warriors’ starters combined.
Kerr kept Podziemski in for the rest of the quarter, but then replaced him to start the second quarter, where he remained throughout the rest of the first half. In fact, Podziemski didn’t come back in until there were a little under seven minutes left in the third quarter. He was a minus-10 at the time with two points.
After the Jazz’s started scoring from downtown, they were held to 4 of 25 (16 percent) the rest of the game, and Podziemski ended as a minus-2 in 18 minutes with six points, five rebounds, three assists and two steals.
