Stephen Curry had perhaps the least effective game of his career on Thursday. Against the Memphis Grizzlies at FedExForum, the Golden State Warriors superstar finished with as many points as he did turnovers: two. Both of his points came at the free-throw line. Curry, the greatest shooter in NBA history, missed all seven field goals he attempted, six of them from behind the 3-point line.
"First time for everything, right?" Curry told reporters. "I never thought that would be a situation or a result of a game. Just from the very jump, they just kind of punched us in the mouth. We didn't have an answer. They shot the ball well, we were getting the ball out of the basket every possession. They were funneling us to the spots on the court that they wanted us instead of the other way around."
It was actually the seventh game of Curry's career in which he failed to make a field goal, per Stathead. In each of the other six, however, he played 11 minutes or fewer. This time, Curry logged 24 minutes, and the Grizzlies outscored Golden State by 41 points in those minutes. Memphis was up by 22 at the end of the first quarter, 31 at halftime and 50 at the end of the third. The final score was 144-93, and the Warriors trailed by as many as 57 points.
"If you don't have an answer for how a team is guarding you, you gotta figure something out on the fly, and we didn't do it," Curry said. He added, "That was kind of embarrassing."
In the 13 seasons and 700-plus regular season games that they've played together, Curry and Draymond Green had never both gone without a made field goal in the same game until Thursday.
"Damn, that happened? Oh shit, that's crazy," Green told reporters. "But it ain't because I didn't make a field goal." Green laughed, then continued: "No, I'm just playing. No, they did a good job. Give them some credit."
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Memphis, whose defense ranks No. 5 in the NBA, face-guarded Curry and allowed his teammates nothing easy in the paint. The Grizzlies "took us out of what we were trying to do," Golden State coach Steve Kerr told reporters. Kerr called it "a humbling night all around."
Generally, the beauty of Curry's particular style of play means that he can have a massively positive impact on the game even on poor shooting nights. No one in the history of the sport has created more scoring opportunities for teammates by moving off the ball and making the defense react to the threat of his jumper. In this game, though, when Curry was on the court, the Warriors shot 11 for 45 (24.4%) from the field and scored 72.2 points per 100 possessions.
"If a team wants to [face-guard me], then we have to be able to -- and I have to be able to -- say, 'OK, I might not be able to get a lot of FGAs, but you gotta be able to create good looks,'" Curry said. "But we gotta be able to get stops to then make them have to second-guess whether that's going to work or not. Tonight, everything worked, so we didn't make them adjust at all."
Fifteen games into the season, Golden State was 12-3 and had the sixth-best offense in the NBA. That was only about a month ago. It has lost 9 of its last 11 games, though, and in that span it has scored just 106 points per 100 possessions, which ranks 27th in the league. That slippage was part of the rationale for acquiring Dennis Schroder from the Brooklyn Nets. In theory, Schroder can punish teams that are hyper-focused on denying Curry the ball. On Thursday, though, Schroder finished with two points on 2-for-12 shooting and four turnovers in 22 minutes.
This was Schroder's Warriors debut, and Kerr threw him straight into the starting lineup. "Dennis looked like a guy on a new team," Kerr said. "It's always very difficult to get traded midseason and play with a brand new group and have different terminology and all that stuff." Curry said that Schroder, a pick-and-roll guard who usually likes to attack off the dribble, seemed uncertain about whether to look for his own shot or keep the ball moving.
"We're going to need Dennis to be very aggressive and not worried that Steph Curry's on the floor," Green said. "And we'll be fine. It's not Dennis' fault, by the way. But I said in a press conference last week we want him to come here and we'll fit around [him], not him worry about try to figure this system out. We'll figure that out, we'll figure it out around him and then he'll figure the system out. And so we need that. And [this was] Game 1. We'll be all right."
Golden State's next game is on Saturday against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who had won six of seven games before a blowout loss against the New York Knicks on Thursday. "I expect us to respond," Green said. The misadventure in Memphis was "kind of a perfect storm of [the] new starting lineup, Dennis in there, the way Memphis defended us and the way they played overall," Curry said. "We ran into a buzzsaw. But we obviously know we're better than that. I gotta be better than that."
The last time the Warriors had a loss this lopsided was in March against the Boston Celtics at TD Garden. Curry shot 2 for 13 that night and missed all nine of his 3-point attempts, and the Celtics cruised to a 140-88 victory. This time, the mood around the team is different, according to Curry.
"I like the vibes better right now than that one, for sure," he said.
Curry said that there is a "sense of urgency" about changing "the momentum of the season," but he feels that Golden State has the answers. "We gotta go to Minnesota and not let bad shooting or the blowout affect your swag and your confidence and your belief that you're a good team," he said.
By the numbers, the Warriors have been only an average team this season. They're 14-12 and 10th in the West, and, according to Cleaning The Glass, they are No. 14 in net rating, No. 22 in offense and No. 7 in defense in non-garbage-time minutes. "Ain't nobody won a championship in December, so we'll be fine," Green said. Kerr has acknowledged that it has been challenging to put together the puzzle, though, and the front office has just given his coaching staff a tricky new piece. If Golden State is better than its record, it has to prove it.
"I'm going to, we're going to keep saying it because I genuinely believe it: We're better than what we've been playing, we're better than what we showed tonight," Curry said. "Vibes are way better. It's nice to say it, but you gotta be able to do something about it, and I feel like we can."
