{"id":236348,"date":"2025-10-24T07:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T07:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/236348\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T07:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T07:06:07","slug":"warriors-survive-gordons-50-as-curry-stars-in-clutch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/236348\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors survive Gordon’s 50 as Curry stars in clutch"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO — Aaron Gordon<\/a>‘s 10th and final made 3 on Thursday night at Chase Center felt like the final dagger. It came with 26 seconds left in regulation, putting the visiting Denver Nuggets<\/a> up by three and punctuating a career night for the 12th-year forward.<\/p>\n

But the biggest perimeter fireworks show in Gordon’s life happened to come against the greatest shooter of all-time.<\/p>\n

Five seconds later, out of a timeout, Stephen Curry<\/a> stepped into a semi-contested 34-footer off a screen and buried it to tie the score. Five minutes later, after Curry opened overtime with another made 3 and closed it with two free throws, the Golden State Warriors<\/a> finished off a 137-131 win to overshadow Gordon’s 50-point masterpiece.<\/p>\n

“The bigger the moment, the more he rises,” Draymond Green<\/a> said of Curry. “He’s this quiet guy … but he loves the show. Anytime there’s a show to be put on, he’s going to do it.”<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

2 Related<\/p>\n

Gordon’s stat line was jaw-dropping: 50 points on 17-of-21 shooting and 10-of-11 from 3. He made eight straight 3s to open the game, one shy of an NBA record.<\/p>\n

“Ridiculous,” Curry said. “Whatever he did this summer, it worked.”<\/p>\n

Two seasons ago, Gordon made only 29 percent of his 1.9 attempted 3s per game. Last season, he made a significant leap, hitting 43.6 percent of his 3.4 per game.<\/p>\n

But Thursday night’s performance was altogether different. Gordon had never made more than seven 3s in a game. Against the Warriors, he became only the 17th player in history to make 10 3s in a losing effort. That has happened to Curry seven times and no other player more than once.<\/p>\n

This time, Curry was the one delivering disappointment to quell a special night. Curry’s 42 points — on 14-of-25 shooting and six 3s — were the second-most he has scored in his 17 home openers. The Warriors struggled when he was off the floor against the Nuggets but won his minutes by 15 points.<\/p>\n

“The shot he made to tie it toward the end [of regulation], it’s a shot that only he can make,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said.<\/p>\n

The Warriors’ biggest strategic choice of the night came late in the fourth quarter. During a timeout huddle, assistant coaches Terry Stotts and Chris DeMarco suggested to head coach Steve Kerr that he deploy a bigger lineup of Curry, Jimmy Butler, Jonathan Kuminga<\/a>, Green and the newly acquired Al Horford<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s a five-man, jumbo-sized grouping (by Warriors’ standards) that Kerr said he hadn’t even thought about using during training camp. They had never even practiced together.<\/p>\n

“Where we going to score?” Kerr said. “That was my biggest concern. Could we execute [offensively]? But [Stotts and DeMarco] reminded me we have Steph and Jimmy and they’ll find a way to score.”<\/p>\n

The use of a larger lineup for the typically smaller Warriors allowed them to match up better defensively, especially with Horford’s ability to switch at the center position and Kuminga’s continued growth as a two-way wing to open his fifth season.<\/p>\n

“It was really fun to watch a group that’s never played together close a game against one of the best teams in the league,” Kerr said.<\/p>\n

That five-man group erased a seven-point Denver lead in the final 3:50 of regulation and beat the Nuggets by six in overtime.<\/p>\n

“I did [previously] think that was a possibility to be a closing lineup,” Green said. “Or a starting lineup. Or a middle of the game lineup.”<\/p>\n

The win moved the Warriors to 2-0, gathering some early momentum as they try to establish themselves as a legitimate conference contender in the Denver tier. The Nuggets (0-1) travel home to face the Suns on Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO — Aaron Gordon‘s 10th and final made 3 on Thursday night at Chase Center felt like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-236348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}