Steph Curry needed one quarter to erase a 23-point deficit, then broke Luka Doncic’s ankles for good measure on his way to passing Dominique Wilkins for 18th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. Pick which part of that sentence you want to argue about first.
Two nights after the pregame hype piece we ran asked who’d own this one, Doncic answered first. He dropped 21 points in the opening twelve minutes, shooting 7-for-12 with five threes and five assists, the kind of quarter that’s supposed to just end a game right there. The Lakers led 38-15 after one, a 23-point hole most teams don’t climb back out of in an NBA Cup group game, let alone against the guy playing the best basketball of his career.
Golden State climbed out of it anyway.
By halftime the score was tied at 53. No team had erased a deficit that size to tie or lead by halftime anywhere in the shot-clock era, a stretch of basketball running back to 1954-55, until the Warriors did it. Doncic cooled to 5-for-15 and 1-for-7 from three over the rest of the night after that opening burst, and Curry turned the game into the version of himself that makes grown men question their life choices: 31 points on 11-for-23 shooting, 8-for-14 from three, six assists, four rebounds, in a 112-95 win.
The play that set the tone arrived with 6:27 left in the third. Curry isolated Doncic on the left wing, strung together a dribble combination that got Doncic off balance and sent him to the floor, and rose up for a three while Doncic was still trying to find his footing. The Warriors outscored the Lakers 52-23 from that possession to the final horn.
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Curry played it down afterward: “I was just trying to get a little bit of space. I didn’t expect it to get that nasty.” Doncic still walked away with 37 points on the night, which is worth saying out loud, because the ankle-breaker was a moment inside the game, not a summary of it.
Give the guy his flowers even while his crossover footage gets turned into a group chat meme.
None of that explains how a team actually erases 23 points. The real answer is less fun than the highlight: Golden State’s bench outscored the Lakers’ bench 50-7, with De’Anthony Melton and Georges Niang combining for 27 points off a unit the Lakers had no answer for. I run a Tuesday night rec league in Hoboken and even our bench doesn’t get outscored by 43.
Curry’s trophy case for passing legends is getting crowded.
He’s already rewriting the scoring record books this season, and Wilkins is just the latest name he passed, finishing the night at 26,674 career points for 18th all-time. Oscar Robertson sits next at 26,710, a 36-point gap Curry could close within a game or two at the rate he’s playing right now.
