Stephen Curry has been around long enough to be playful when it comes to his rare and recent shootouts.
Are his hands healthy after a few minor injuries?
“They’re still clinging to my body and I still have a lot of attempts to make,” the two-time MVP said after another night when his Golden State Warriors smack the Utah Jazz by 94-92 on Sunday.
“I’m trying to have fun with it. It’s a Big Picture perspective as you approach the game, the work you put in. It’s obviously frustrating. I want to shoot the Ball, it’s frustrating. I kicked the chair the other day for that reason,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t care and I’m not trying to figure it out, but I’m not taking care of it.”
While curry’s shot is a bit of a miss — for now – Coach Steve Kerr praises his star guard’s handling of the ball, the way he splits and defends, and all the other intangibles, like those 34 passes six times in the last four games.
Curry scored 13 points and, a month after becoming the NBA’s all-time 3s leader, again struggled with his 3-point shot. He went 1 for 13 from deep and 5 for 20 overall.
“Steph is beautiful body. In the last few games, he’s been playing some of his basketball in terms of point guard duties,” Kerr said. “He takes care of the basketball, he plays great defense, the shots just don’t go. … He seemed inhuman for so long. I think everyone expects to be in a Groove all season and it doesn’t work out that way.”
Jordan Poole scored 20 points Sunday night to lead a balanced Golden State offense as the Warriors held off a after Jazz rally. And curry’s brother-in-law, Damion Lee, did his part to come off the bench to hit four clutch 3-pointers and score 12 points.
The Warriors wanted to give Curry’s buzzers some momentum in a 105-103 win over Houston on Friday night. But it was another frantic finish.
Joe Ingles tied the game at 89 with 4:09 left.
Despite an 11-point fourth quarter, the warriors held the Jazz to 17 and 38.3 percent over that span. Royce O’Neale rebounded Bojan Bogdanovic’s missed 3-pointer with a hand to his face and O’Neale couldn’t convert a tip-in when the final buzzer sounded.
“That’s how you have to win if you take a little time,” Kerr said. “I’m really proud of the Team.”
Poole made another start and replaced Klay Thompson, who was a after scratch with soreness in his surgically repaired left knee, which kept him out of the game the entire season.
Poole, who went 7 of 13, told Curry to “keep shooting.”
“His shot was good today,” Poole said. “We know how good he is as a shooter.”
Bogdanovic-who recently treated an wounded left ring finger-scored 21 points, while Rudy Gobert grabbed 18 rebounds to go with 12 points for the Jazz, who lost their fourth straight to the warriors. This series goes back exactly a year, when the Jazz was held on Jan. in Utah, 127-108 won.
Rudy Gay’s 3 with 11:37 left pulled the Jazz within 83-78, then Gobert dived in two possessions after to make it 83-80 before another Slam of an rude rebound at 9:46. Gay finished with 16 points and four 3s.
Golden State’s Kevon Looney had his career-best streak of five straight games with double-digit rebounds end when he grabbed six boards. But his three-point play on a putback with 1:48 left meant a lot and he finished with 10 points.
Kerr called the basket the “key rude possession of the game.”
“It was big for me, I showed a lot of emotion,” Looney said.
