The Warriors had the ball in the right hands in the final seconds of their 117-116 loss to the Houston Rockets on Sunday at Chase Center, but Steph Curry came up empty.
Golden State trailed by one point with 11.1 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter before Curry dribbled up the court to attempt the game-winning shot.
Defended by two Rockets at the top of the key, Curry threw up a deep shot that clanked off iron right before the final buzzer rang and ended the Warriors’ spirited fourth-quarter comeback attempt.
Speaking to reporters after the game, Warriors coach Steve Kerr was asked why he did not call timeout to draw up a play before the final possession.
“Well we didn’t want to take the timeout because we wanted to keep their defensive guys on the floor, that lineup on the floor,” Kerr explained. “You take the timeout, they just put all their Dobermans in and switch everything and it’s really hard to get a good look.
“I haven’t seen a replay yet. My gut is our spacing wasn’t great. I think I saw three guys on one side, we wanted to give Steph a high screen, pulling their weaker defenders in. He got a decent look, but it’s probably a good clip for us to have for these last games and the play-in, just to go over that again. I never really like to take timeouts in that situation if there’s time. I’d rather have the chaos that ensues and the matchups that you want. And so, the process was what we wanted, I’m not sure we got spaced very well, I’ll have to look at it.”
At the 0:12 mark in the clip above, both Kerr and Warriors forward Draymond Green can be seen emphatically motioning to, it appears, guard Brandin Podziemski, to come help set a screen for Curry, who ended up double-teamed on the final shot.
Curry also was asked about the final possession, and echoed similar sentiments as his coach, while stating he had no regrets from the sequence.
“We didn’t have a play call because we thought we were going to get a stop, but the usual kind of reaction there is to try and get, they had [Alperen] Şengün out there, is to try and get him in a pick and roll and see what they were going to do, but everything kind of got a little stagnant at the top of the key,” Curry said. “I haven’t watched the possession to see where there might have been a better option, but it seems there was a wall at the 3-point line and I couldn’t figure out exactly where to go.
“There’s no regrets there, you like the matchup with their lineup out there thinking you can get a good shot with whatever it was, 11-12 seconds left. Tough finish for sure, but proud of the way we fought down the stretch.”
While Curry was unable to hit the shot that ultimately mattered most, he still had an excellent game in his long-awaited return to the court, scoring 29 points on 11-of-21 shooting from the field and 5 of 10 from 3-point range in 26 minutes.
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