SAN FRANCISCO — Stephen Curry started his Christmas Day at Chase Center by speaking at a Golden State Warriors players-only gathering before facing the Los Angeles Lakers, then continued the conversation with his best performance of the holiday.
Curry scored 38 points, including eight points in a frantic 25.7-second final, but saw Austin Reaves score on a driving layup with 1.7 seconds left to lift the Lakers to a 115-113 victory over the Warriors lift.
After a 12-3 start, Golden State has lost 11 of its past 14 games. That’s why Curry and his teammates gathered to talk about finding a way out of this funk.
“It’s obviously a turning point as to what direction our season can go,” Curry said after scoring his personal best for a Christmas game. “Our last 14 games it’s been hard to find any kind of momentum or consistency, and because of that you can’t lose courage and belief that we’re a good enough team to find that out because this competition is brutal.” .
“This competition changes from window to window of what you can fall back on, and when you dig a hole like that for yourself it can sometimes be hard to get out of it, so we’re right in that window where we can still gain something back. momentum, however, many weeks before the [All-Star] break are crucial or else [we are] in a situation where we are chasing the piece. And no one wants to be there.”
There’s a chance Curry won’t be available to help Golden State (15-14) snap a two-game losing streak when the Warriors play the LA Clippers on Friday at the Intuit Dome. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said the team will look at resting Curry sometime in the next two games to treat bilateral tendonitis in his knees. The Warriors play a back-to-back, starting in Los Angeles and playing at home against the Phoenix Suns on Saturday.
“We’re in trouble,” Kerr said of the team’s morale during this slump. “Everyone is disappointed. We have lost some confidence. You can feel it. We had a great atmosphere early in the season and we are going through it now.
“But I love our guys, high character guys. They care about each other. They care about each other. I believe in them. I believe we’ll turn this thing around, so this is all part of the season, part of life.” “
Curry did everything he could to turn the Warriors’ momentum around. Golden State trailed 104-94 with 3:27 to go. Curry then scored 13 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 113-113 with 7.6 seconds left. He hit two three-point bombs in a span of five seconds, sending Chase Center into a frenzy as his Christmas showdown with LeBron James lived up to the hype.
Curry was 14 of 24 from the field, including 8 of 15 from behind the arc. But it wasn’t enough.
The Warriors continue to look for a way to turn things around after falling to eighth in the Western Conference standings.
“We’re at a point now where you can let it go and drop a few more,” Warriors center Trayce Jackson-Davis said. “Or you can get back on the horse and start winning.”
Kerr, Curry and Draymond Green have repeatedly said they believe the Warriors are a good team and will make it through this stretch.
“I still have hope and confidence that we can work it out,” Curry said. “So it’s how I’m built and I feel like you go out there and talk about it, but how you execute it, how you show up every night, the effort we put in, even considering what our record has been last stretch it’s a team desperately trying to figure it out. It just hasn’t gone our way. So yeah, until things change you have to keep that mentality.