Other Stats
Golden State Warriors Stat Denver Nuggets 42% Field Goal % 42% 58% 3 Pointer % 40% 90% Free Throw % 64% 20 Team Fouls 15 10 Offensive Rebounds 13 42 Points In The Paint 58 35 Bench Points 28 11 Second Chance Points 11 37 Fast Break Points 33 25 Points Off Turnovers 27
Game Comments
What a game this was. Much like against Sacramento, we jumped out to a quick and early lead, jumping out quick with an 11-2 run to start the game, then a couple missed shots and turnovers allowed Denver to close the gap right up to a 16-14 lead. We immediately went on an 8-0 run to make it 24-14 but Denver fought right back, resulting only a 3 point lead at the end of the first quarter. We spent the entire second half of the first quarter without Stephen Curry, who racked up a foul in the first couple minutes of the game, then a second foul just minutes later, causing him to sit out the rest of the quarter.
Start of the second quarter found us once again sprinting out of the game, going on a 13-2 run to give us a 42-28 lead, but Denver would gradually chip into the lead and we went into halftime with only an 11 point lead. We got Curry back on the floor for part of the second quarter, but he quickly drew his third foul, resulting in him seeing limited time.
The third quarter found us slugging it out heavyweight style. Denver would score on a jumper, we'd score right back. They'd hit a 3-pointer, we'd hit one right back. That would only last a couple minutes as around the 9 minute mark, we suddenly couldn't hit anything. We ended up with a total of 3 field goals during a 6 minute stretch in the third quarter, during which the Nuggets went on a 22-7 run to catch up and take the lead from us. However, we finally got settled down and got our confidence back, as we proceeded to find the bottom of the net again, and then in addition, scored 8 points in the final 50 seconds of the game, including a 3-pointer from Ellis with 0.3 seconds left in the quarter to help us overcome a 4 point deficit to take a 5 point lead into the fourth quarter.
The fourth quarter was a back and forth battle the entire way through. We'd jump out to a 6 point lead, Denver would come right back and take a 3 point lead. We'd jump ahead by 2, they'd comeback and jump over us by 5. Down the stretch, Denver attempted a couple 3s that never had a chance, as well as a couple of untimely turnover and a pair of shot clock violations that allowed us to retake the lead and keep it for good, holding off the Nuggets at the end. Denver tried to foul us towards the end when we had a 111-109 lead, but on the inbound pass to Ellis, he quickly threw it up court to Wright, who immediately threw it to Rush just inside the arc, who sank the jumper to give us a 113-109 lead with 6.7 seconds left, with Denver not being able to foul us in time during the quick possession. The Nuggets were able to get the two points back with a foul on a layup attempt, and Lawson sank them both, but we were able to run out the final 1.7 seconds on the clock without an intentional foul by Denver.
This game also marked the first time we ran into quite a bit of foul trouble. Curry had two fouls in the first 6 minutes of the game, picked up his third in the second quarter, and ended the game with four fouls. Monta Ellis also ended the game with four fouls, Dorell Wright had three for the game, and David Lee ended up fouling out of the game with less than two minutes left to play, ending his day 0-2 and with 0 points.
As for Denver, holy crap am we lucky to win this. There were points we were getting lit up by multiple player and there was nothing we could do. During one stretch, Arron Afflalo hit back to back 3-pointers, another point in the game Danilo Gallinari hit three of his four 3-pointers in a less than two minute stretch, Al Harrington sank a couple on me. And then Kenneth Faried, he was destroying us inside. A couple easy jumpers that we could do nothing about, a couple put backs that we had no chance to defend, added 3 points from the charity stripe, and was picking up every rebound he could. Ty Lawson was the guy I was most worried about, as having played as Denver before on this game, I know exactly what Lawson can do, but we shut down Lawson pretty well for the most part, it was everyone else, Afflalo, Harrington, Gallinari, Faried, even freaking Nene (who also destroyed me in the paint), who were all lighting us up all game long.
I'm also partly to blame for how poorly Golden State did at times, because I stupidly went and fucked with our tempo. The Warriors are best when they have fast breaks, are running the opponents all over the court, and sprinting down the court for a layup or pull up shot immediately after a rebound, before the defense can even get set. There were points during the game that I slowed things down, used up the entire shot clock, and wasn't taking shots until only 2 or 3 seconds left on the shot clock. It showed this time as there were multiple points in the game where we had multiple stretches of multiple minutes with either no field goals or only 1 or 2 field goals for the entire stretch, all the while Denver sitting there making basket after basket.
Denver also played our game better than us. Against both the Lakers and Sacramento, we absolutely dominated the points in the paint (scoring 66 of my 124 points against the Kings and 48 of my 85 points against the Lakers down in the paint), but this time, it was Denver who dropped 58 points on me from inside the point, while we only had 42 points in the paint. We were also almost even on fast break points, as we had 37 and Denver had 33, whereas we outscored the Lakers by 19 and the Kings by 18 in fast break points. And it didn't help that Denver was forcing us to turn the ball over left and right and had 13 steals for the game. So Denver pretty much played our gameplan exactly, and pretty much played our gameplan better than we played it ourselves.
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Originally Posted by morsdraconis
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