\u00a0Stephen Curry scored 23 points and knocked down a key 3-pointer with 3:45 left to help seal it, Jimmy Butler added 14 points, nine assists and nine rebounds, and the Golden State Warriors beat the Dallas Mavericks 126-116 on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Mavericks rookie star Cooper Flagg had 27 points on 13-for-21 shooting, six rebounds and five assists in his Christmas Day debut, while Brandon Williams scored 26 off the bench.<\/p>\n
Klay Thompson returned to face his former Warriors team in the holiday matinee after missing Tuesday’s home game against the Nuggets with soreness in his left knee.<\/p>\n
And former Splash Brother Curry kept sneaking a peek of Thompson’s warmup before they met at midcourt for a greeting and embrace. Thompson received a warm ovation when he entered the game for the first time with 5:51 remaining in the opening quarter.<\/p>\n
Mavericks center\u00a0Anthony Davis didn’t return\u00a0after exiting in the second quarter with groin spasms. Davis had three points, three rebounds and two blocked shots in 11 minutes.<\/p>\n
Draymond Green started and contributed seven points and five rebounds playing in foul trouble two days after\u00a0he and coach Steve Kerr had a heated exchange\u00a0during a third-quarter timeout against Orlando \u2014 with both later apologizing to each other.<\/p>\n
Golden State started 0 for 6 from 3-point range before the Mavericks even attempted their first shot from deep. Moses Moody connected at the 6:05 mark of the first quarter and that helped the Warriors get going \u2014 along with Al Horford.<\/p>\n
Horford returned from a seven-game absence because of sciatica in his right leg. He came in at the 5:27 mark of the first and made all four of his 3-pointers as the Warriors led 40-28 after one quarter. He finished with 14 points, De’Anthony Melton scored 16 and Brandin Podziemski contributed 13 points, eight rebounds and four assists off the bench.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The Mavericks play at Sacramento on Saturday while the Warriors hit the road to face Toronto on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0Stephen Curry scored 23 points and knocked down a key 3-pointer with 3:45 left to help seal it,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2582,116,118,117,3080],"class_list":["post-101221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-nba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}