Stephen Curry saved his best for first during the NBA’s showcase All-Star weekend at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
A night after edging former Miramonte High star Sabrina Ionescu of the New York Liberty in a groundbreaking WNBA-NBA 3-point challenge, Curry came up cold Sunday night as a reserve for the West in a 211-186 loss to the East in the NBA All-Star game.
Curry, named to his 10th All-Star game and playing as a reserve for the first time, hit his first two 3-point attempts and was 2-for-11 the rest of the way from beyond the arc. He finished with 16 points on 6-for-17 shooting, 4-for-13 on 3-point attempts and added eight assists and five rebounds in just under 26 minutes of playing time.
A 35.3 shooting percentage was the third lowest out of 24 players who saw playing time in the highest-scoring game in All-Star history, with only Luka Doncic of Dallas (3-for-10, 30 percent) and Trey Young of Atlanta and the East (2-for-6, 33 percent) doing worse.
Curry wasn’t bashful about dialing long-distance, with misses coming from as far as 36 and 41 feet. He’s already looking forward to next year’s All-Star Game when the Warriors play host at Chase Center.
“I’m extremely excited. In 2019 I got to go home to Charlotte and feel the love of my hometown and embrace that experience,” Curry told reporters following the game. “I imagine it’s going to be that plus a whole lot more, hosting it in the bay. The whole bay has a lot to offer. San Francisco, Chase Center, possibly some spotlights on Oakland and our history there. I’m thankful it will be a short drive.”
In Curry’s last All-Star game in 2022 (he was named a starter but didn’t play due to injury last season), he set an All-Star game record by hitting 16 of 27 3-point shots and scored 50 points for Team LeBron when the game was played under a different format.
Warriors teammate Draymond Green, working on the TNT telecast Sunday night, predicted beforehand Curry would end up the game’s Most Valuable Player
“I’m looking for Steph being MVP. He’s not a starter and he’ll take that as a sign of disrespect and you know how that goes,” Green said.
Sheeeesh, Curry pic.twitter.com/StVWdHgljG
— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) February 19, 2024
Wonder of wonders, Curry did manage a pair of impressive plays in areas where he has long been anonymous. First, Curry actually blocked a shot inside from behind by Orlando’s Paulo Banchero — one of only three blocks in a game where defense was a rumor — and also scored off an alley-oop off a feed from Karl-Anthony Towns in which he didn’t reach the rim but banked a shot home.
Curry was upstaged in terms of long-distance shooting by Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard, the Oakland High product who led all scorers with 39 points, hitting 14 of 26 shots and 11 of 23 from 3-point range. Lillard, who won the 3-point contest Saturday night after Curry’s shootout with Ionescu, was named the game’s MVP.
“Dame’s been doing it his whole career,” Curry said. “I know I got off to the head start and you just stretch your imagination . . .it’s always fun to stretch the limits of where you can shoot and he’s been doing it for a long time.”
Towns of Minnesota led all scorers with 50 points, 31 of them in the fourth quarter. He hit 22 of 35 shots.
Ionescu hit her first seven shots Saturday night to put the pressure on Curry, who had to out-shoot all the winners in the NBA 3-point contest to escape with a win.
“The whole spirit of competition, it manifested itself the way it was supposed to,” Curry said. “She showed up, put the pressure on me to get a pretty good number to win it. I I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome for the whole challenge. I’m more relaxed today. I’m used to this format and I can just go out and play basketball.”
The NBA-WNBA shootout format is expected to return in some form when the Warriors host the All-Star game at Chase. According to SportsMediaWatch, NBA All-Star Saturday night had a viewership bump of 31 percent and peaked in terms of viewership in TNT and TruTV at 5.42 million during the Steph vs. Sabrina contest.
The Warriors, 27-26 after winning eight of their last 10 going into the All-Star break, resume play with a three-game homestand — Thursday night against the Los Angeles Lakers (30-26), Friday night against Charlotte (13-41) and Sunday night against Denver (36-19).
“Since the ’22 finals, we’ve had kind of an up and down existence,” Curry said in a pregame interview on TNT. “There’s a lot of energy right now, a lot of confidence in how we’ve been playing. (Jonathan Kuminga) has been stepping up at an unbelievable level. B.P. (Brandin Podziemski) has stepped into a prominent role.
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“We’re evolving the way we’re playing. We have a great opportunity in front of us and have 30-something games to get on a run. All we want is to go to get in the playoffs and for us, we know what it takes to win a series. We just want to get there.”
LEBRON ON WARRIORS: Here’s how LeBron James responded to the TNT TV crew about the Warriors’ reported interest (via ESPN in bringing him in from the Lakers to play with Curry:
“It didn’t get far at all,” James said. “Sometimes things happen behind closed doors you don’t even know about. If it’s real or not, they’ll bring it to you. They never brought it to me. I heard about it when the report dropped as well.”
