After one of his worst shooting performances in recent years, Stephen Curry bounced back to lead the Golden State Warriors to a fifth consecutive win, beating the Utah Jazz 106-91.
Curry hit just 4-of-17 in the win over the Pelicans on Friday, but looked a lot sharper against a Jazz backcourt with Rodney Hood and Dante Exum in the lineup. Curry scored 24 points on 8-of-18 from the field, getting help from Leandro Barbosa with 19 points and Draymond Green scoring 15.
The Warriors might have the privilege to take things in a more relaxed way as the season is winding down, but despite their lead over the Grizzlies and their very secure hold of the top spot in the West and overall in the NBA, Steve Kerr seems to be putting his players in playoff mode a little bit earlier than usual.
Coach is probably going to treat a lot of games as playoff-like as possible. We just have to play hard, do whatever is asked of us these last 13 games, be mentally locked in and focused and continue to win. You don’t want to stumble into the playoffs.
But don’t be surprised to see players getting resting time the closer we get to the postseason. Klay Thompson is out with an injury, David Lee didn’t play once again. The Warriors are still moving forward very well and not showing any signs of slowing down, which makes it much easier for the head coach to start planning who is going to sit once they clinch home court advantage.
The Jazz’ defense has been the best in the league over the last three weeks, but despite a very good start, they couldn’t keep up with the shooting of the Warriors, who rely a lot on their defense and especially Andrew Bogut (3 blocks) to generate easy points, finishing with 25 on the fast break compared to just six by the Jazz, which made pretty much the entire difference.