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It just started 24 minutes later.
Kevon Looney shocked the Dallas Mavericks with a career-high 21
points and the Golden State Warriors erased a 19-point deficit
en route to a 126-117 victory Friday night in San Francisco for
a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference finals.
Warriors star Stephen Curry put up a team-high 32 points.
Luka Doncic rebounded from a playoffs-season-low 20 points with
a game-high 42 and the Mavericks connected on 21 3-pointers, but
that wasn't enough to prevent them from heading home without a
win in the best-of-seven series.
The scene shifts to Dallas for Games 3 and 4 of the
best-of-seven series on Sunday and Tuesday.
Coming off a 112-87 shellacking in Game 1, the Mavericks buried
15 3-pointers in the first half and led by as many as 19 in 24
minutes that featured four technical fouls, including one on
Golden State's emotional leader, Draymond Green.
With Dallas up 72-58 at the break, Kerr's instructions to the
Warriors were simple.
"I told them if we develop some poise in the second half, the
game would come to us," Kerr said. "Dallas came out and punched
us. We were scattered. We just needed to get poised. We felt
confident they wouldn't make 15 threes in the second half. And
if they do, you pat them on the back and say, 'Nice job.' If
somebody makes 30 threes in a game, they deserve to win."
But as they did in the first quarter of a one-sided loss in Game
1 two nights earlier, the Mavericks lost their way from beyond
the arc in the second half. And while they were going 2-for-13
on long-range attempts in the third period, the Warriors
rallied.
The advantage was still 79-64 with 7:06 remaining in the third
before the Warriors exploded. The game-turning spurt began with
a 19-6 run at the end of the period to close the gap to two.
Looney contributed five points to the spurt while Jordan Poole
and Andrew Wiggins each had four.
Mavericks coach Kidd admitted he sensed the game was slipping
away and hoped his team learned a lesson.
"The guys came out and executed and put us in a position to win
on the road," he said of the first half. "But the third quarter
... we've got to do better. We have to understand when three or
four in a row miss, you've got to get the ball to the rim, into
the paint, you've got to get to the free-throw line. But when
you go 2-for-13 and you rely on the three, you can die by the
three."
Golden State took the lead for good when Otto Porter Jr. opened
the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer, and the hosts didn't stop
there. The Warriors built a 99-92 advantage by completing a 16-7
run in which Porter (seven), Poole (five) and Looney (four) did
all the scoring.
The Mavericks got no closer than five after that.
Looney, whose previous career high of 19 came in the 2019
playoffs against the Los Angeles Clippers, hit 10 of his 14
shots and also found time for a game-high 12 rebounds. The
double-double was just the second of his postseason career.
The playoff-tested big man shrugged off the individual glory and
praised the team's defense.
"In the first half, they got to wherever they wanted and got a
lot of wide-open threes," he said. "In the second half, we were
able to get them off the 3-point line and make things tougher
for them. When we're able to get stops on a great player like
Luka, it's a big boost to us and the crowd."
Looney and Curry got plenty of help. Poole finished with 23
points, Wiggins 16, Klay Thompson 15 and Porter 11 for the
Warriors, who shot 56.1 percent for the second consecutive game.
Doncic shot 12-for-23 overall and 5-for-10 on 3-point tries for
the Mavericks, who improved from 36 percent shooting in Game 1
to 47.4 percent in the rematch.
Dallas' Reggie Bullock hit six 3-pointers to account for almost
all his 21 points. Jalen Brunson made five treys on a 31-point
night, helping the Mavericks rebound from an 11-for-48 effort
from beyond the arc in the opener to hit 21 of 45.
Doncic also accumulated a game-high eight assists, while Dorian
Finney-Smith collected a team-high eight rebounds to complement
10 points.
--Field Level Media
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