Home NBA BREAKING: Steve Kerr breaks a clipboard to wake up Warriors in win over Magic

BREAKING: Steve Kerr breaks a clipboard to wake up Warriors in win over Magic

NBA · February 4, 2025 · Comments off

Steve Kerr breaks a clipboard to wake up Warriors in win over Magic

SAN FRANCISCO — Andrew Wiggins scored a team-best 25 points, Steph Curry added 16 of his 24 in the second half and the Golden State Warriors overcame one of their worst offensive halves of the season to beat the Orlando Magic, 104-99, on Monday night.

What changed?

“Coach broke a clipboard,” Moses Moody said after contributing 17 points in the win.

“Took us 48 games to get the broken clipboard,” added Curry. “Thankfully he didn’t cut himself this time. Few times he’s done that.”

After the Warriors allowed the Magic to grab an offensive rebound off a missed free throw, Steve Kerr called timeout and his frustration boiled over. They missed their first seven attempts from 3, went without a field goal for multiple stretches of 4-plus minutes and entered halftime with their sixth-lowest scoreboard total of the season.

They couldn’t afford to give away free possessions, too.

“We’re not a team that can withstand that,” Curry said of Kerr’s message.

Asked about their halftime adjustments, Kerr said facetiously, “Just brilliant coaching, mainly.”

But something clicked for Golden State in the second half. Wiggins slammed home their first possession out of the locker room, and the Warriors didn’t trail again until the Magic rallied to reclaim a brief 92-90 advantage with 4:27 remaining. With 1:07 left, Moody sank the dagger.

His corner 3, extending the lead to 99-94, was the Warriors’ seventh on 16 attempts in the second half (43.8%) after shooting 21.7% (5 for 23) from beyond the arc and 36.6% (15 for 41) from the field in the first half. Connecting on 11 of 19 shots in a 39-point third quarter — 6 of 8 from 3 — Golden State nearly matched its scoring output from the entire first half (43).

“We didn’t come out with the right force that we needed to beat a team like Orlando,” said center Kevon Looney, who led the Warriors with 16 rebounds and six assists. “We didn’t match their physicality early. Steve got on us and we responded as a group. It’s a long season — there are going to be some games where it takes Coach cussing us out to get us going. … His hand probably hurts right now.”

“We woke up,” Kerr said. “We were asleep in the first half. We had some possessions that made no sense. The guys locked in at halftime, scored the first six or eight points (of the second half) and … set a really good tone. That got us lead. Of course they were able to battle back in the fourth, but we were able to hang on.”

Slow starts have been a season-long struggle for these Warriors, who rank third-to-last in first-quarter scoring (26.6) and required three Curry free throws with less than a second left in the opening period to come within nine points of that total Monday night. It was the ninth time in 49 games they had been held to 45 points or fewer in the first half, but the first time they pulled out a win.

“I think we were playing hard in the first half, we just weren’t executing well,” Curry said. “Silly mistakes, like giving up offense rebounds off of free throws. We didn’t execute a couple (inbounds plays) out of timeouts. We were just a little choppy. And then we connected both sides of the floor in that third quarter.”

Closing out a 4-2 homestand, the win also featured the return of Draymond Green, who grabbed seven rebounds, dished out five assists and scored four points in 29 minutes in his first game since January 9. Notably, it was the Warriors’ first time holding an opponent to double-digits in nearly two months.

“As soon as he stepped on the floor, you can see the impact he had,” Wiggins said. “He’s one of the highest IQ guys in the league. Gets us settled. He’s there helping everybody. Keeping us all connected and together.”

Wiggins got to the free-throw line 15 times and converted 10 of them. It was the seventh time in his past 11 games that he reached 20 points, averaging a team-best 20.8 per game during that stretch.

“I’m just trying to get some wins, you know,” Wiggins said. “I’m just trying to do whatever I can do get some wins.”

This win finished off a three-week stretch of nine games where the Warriors didn’t leave Northern California. They went 5-4, and now hit the road for seven straight away from home, beginning Wednesday in Utah in their final game before the NBA trade deadline.

“It’s good to leave town on a win, to be above .500, to basically put together a solid couple of weeks,” Kerr said. “So all of that is good. Now we have to carry it out on the road.”

Originally Published:

MsNga

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