It is the rarest of occasions when Stephen Curry and “bad shot” can be used in the same sentence, but on Wednesday night, in the waning seconds of the Warriors’ NBA Cup quarterfinal game against the Rockets, Curry indeed pulled the trigger on a bad shot at the worst time. And it probably cost Golden State a trip to Las Vegas.
Important distinction: The shot itself wasn’t a bad one. In fact, it was a great one. A wide-open 3 at the top of the key after Curry lost Dillon Brooks on a step-back. The problem was situational. The Warriors were in control of a one-point lead and the ball with 27.2 seconds on the clock after an Alperen Sengun layup.
Do the math, and that’s a 3.2-second differential between the game and 24-second shot clock. Given the tight squeeze, it was strange that the Rockets chose not to foul and instead play out the final defensive possession. It was a gift for the Warriors, who only had to bleed the clock down to the last instant and launch up a shot to all but end the game.
Do it right and launch up a super-high-arcing moon-ball shot and by the time the ball comes down, caroms off the rim, and the Rockets grab the rebound and call timeout, those 3.2 seconds have probably ticked off and the game is over.
And that’s if the Warriors don’t make the shot in the first place. Or the rebound doesn’t bounce even a little crooked. Either of those things happen, and again, the game is over. Best case scenario for the Rockets, or worst-case for the Warriors, is Curry shoots a normal-arc shot with 3.2 seconds left, misses, and Houston gets the rebound with maybe a second left. At best. Calls timeout. And then has to hit a catch-and-shoot game-winner on the other end off a sideline-out-of-bound play. Not likely.
All of this is to say, the right play in this situation, even for a shooter as great as Curry, was to pass up the open look at the 12.4-second mark and run the clock down as far as possible before launching. But Curry didn’t do that. He took his shot the moment it presented itself. And he missed.
From there, as you can see, all hell broke loose. Nobody controlled the rebound (had Curry shot with 3.2 seconds left and this happened, again, the clock would have run out), and Gary Payton II and Fred VanVleet wound up scrambling to the floor for the loose ball.
Payton corralled it, and he probably made his own mistake by not just covering up and forcing VanVleet to tie him up (he likely wins that jump ball). But Payton tried to get rid of the ball on instinct and his pass was basically a ground ball that turned into another loose ball. Jonathan Kuminga and Jalen Green wound up battling for it, and Kuminga was called for a foul. The Rockets were in the bonus. Green made both free throws.
Now it was Golden State having to inbound from the side with three seconds left down by one, and they couldn’t even get a clean shot off. Rockets win. Steve Kerr was incensed about the whistle on Kuminga given the situation — 80 feet from the basket in a loose-ball scrum with the game on the line. He’s right. Almost never do you see fouls called in these tie-up situations, and certainly not in the closing seconds.
However, Kuminga did foul Green. Perhaps VanVleet fouled Payton in similar fashion in the first scramble, but neither of those things are really the point. The Warriors did this to themselves. They had a six-point lead with 1:16 to play and their final five possessions went like this:
- Shot Clock Violation
- Shot Clock Violation
- Turnover
- Missed 3-pointer
- Blocked 3-pointer
Credit Houston’s defense, which was superb all night and certainly down the stretch. But also blame Curry, who, even with all the ways the Warriors tried to shoot themselves in the foot, was in position to close out the game by basically doing nothing.
It’s been said that it isn’t possible for Curry to take a bad shot, because for him, even bad shots are good ones. That’s almost always a true statement. But not in this case. Sure, Curry could have drilled that shot and the game would’ve likely been over with a four-point lead for the Warriors and 11ish seconds to play, but situationally, this was the rare time when Curry would’ve been smart to keep the gun in the holster and allow the power of time to take over.
Even for the greatest shooter to ever live, there are bad shots here and there. This was one of them. And it cost the Warriors not only a trip to Vegas for the NBA Cup semifinals, but an important win against a top-four team in a Western Conference where, come April, a few wins are going to have significant playoff-seeding implications.
