SAN FRANCISCO — Stephen Curry started off his Christmas Day at Chase Center by speaking up at a Golden State Warriors players-only meeting before facing the Los Angeles Lakers and then backed up the talk with his best performance on the holiday.
Curry poured in 38 points, including eight points in a frantic final 25.7 seconds, only to watch Austin Reaves score on a driving layup with 1.7 seconds left to lift the Lakers to a 115-113 win over the Warriors.
After a 12-3 start, Golden State has lost 11 of its past 14 games. That is why Curry and his teammates gathered to talk about trying to find a way to get out of this funk.
“It is an inflection point on obviously which direction our season can go,” Curry said after scoring his personal best for a Christmas game. “Our last 14 games, it’s just been tough trying to find any type of momentum or consistency, and through that, you just can’t lose spirit and belief that we’re a good enough team to figure it out because this league is ruthless.
“This league changes from window to window of what you can fall back on, and when you dig yourself a hole like that, sometimes it can be hard to pull out of. So we’re right in that window where we can still regain some momentum however many weeks before the [All-Star] break are pivotal or else [we are] in a situation where we’re chasing down the stretch. And nobody wants to be there.”
There’s a chance Curry might not be available to help Golden State (15-14) snap a two-game losing streak when the Warriors play the LA Clippers at the Intuit Dome on Friday. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said the team will look at resting Curry to manage bilateral tendinitis in his knees at some point in the next two games. The Warriors play a back-to-back starting in Los Angeles and continuing at home Saturday against the Phoenix Suns.
“We’re down,” Kerr said of the team’s morale during this slump. “Everybody’s disappointed. We’ve lost some confidence. You can feel it. We had a great vibe early in the season, and we’re going through it right now.
“But I love our guys, high-character guys. They care. They care about each other. I believe in them. I believe we’re going to get this thing turned around, so this is all part of the season, part of life.”
Curry did all he could to turn the Warriors’ momentum around. Golden State trailed 104-94 with 3:27 left. Curry then scored 13 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter to even the game at 113-113 with 7.6 seconds left. He hit two 3-point bombs in the span of five seconds to send Chase Center into a frenzy as his Christmas showdown with LeBron James lived up to the hype.
Curry was 14-of-24 from the field, including 8-of-15 from behind the arc. But it wasn’t enough.
The Warriors continue to look for a way to turn things around after they slipped to eighth in the Western Conference standings.
“We’re at a point right now where you can either kind of let go and kind of drop a few more,” Warriors center Trayce Jackson-Davis said. “Or you can get back on the horse and start winning.”
Kerr, Curry and Draymond Green have repeatedly said that they believe the Warriors are a good team and will get through this stretch.
“I still have hope and faith and confidence that we can figure it out,” Curry said. “So it’s how I’m built and I feel like you go out there and you talk about it, but how you execute, how you show up on a nightly basis, the effort we’re giving, even considering what our record’s been over the last stretch, it’s a team that’s desperate, trying to figure it out. Just hasn’t gone our way. So yeah, until things change, you got to keep that mentality.”
