Stephen Curry and Luka Doncic combine for 99 points in a round-trip duel forever

The only disappointment about the Warriors-Mavericks clash on Saturday night was that there were no fans in the arena to witness what must be one of the great duels in recent NBA history. Stephen Curry finished with 57 points, but it was not enough, as Luka Doncic responded with 42 points, the best of his career, by leading the Mavericks in the 134-132 victory over the Warriors.

Yes, your quick math is correct.

Curry and Doncic dropped one point before agreeing to 100.

There will be a lot of defense investigations in this game, but it was not as bad as a total of 266 points would normally indicate. The Mavericks greats weren’t consistently aggressive enough to push Curry on top of the pick-and-roll, and the small-sized Warriors were in scramble all night, leaving Dallas many open eyes outside the basic movement of the ball.

But in the end, it was just an electrical shot, particularly on the part of Curry, who finished 11 of 19 in his 16th career game with at least 10 3-point achievements. No other player in history has more than five of those games, by ESPN Stats and Info. This also marks the sixth time Curry has scored at least 50 points with at least 10 3s; no other player in history has more than two of those games.

“Sublime”, Warriors coach, Steve Kerr said about Curry’s performance. “The shots he hit were ridiculous. The degree of difficulty, the ease with which I did them. He never played better. We are talking about a double MVP. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s always obviously been an incredible sniper, but he seems stronger to me, just overtaking people, pushing them away on walks to the edge, finishing. And, of course, the filming. It is almost incomprehensible what he is doing there. “

Think about the statement by Kerr, a man who watched Curry sideline accumulate three championships and two MVPs, who saw him make an NBA record of 402 points from 3 points in a 45 percent clip in 2015-16, which there is only a month saw Curry drop 62 points in the Blazers. Kerr has seen Curry do things that apparently would challenge human capacity more times than he can probably count, and he is saying that this is the best look he has ever seen. This is an amazing prospect.

And he can be right. The strokes Curry made seem routine – as he, you know, used to do – against Dallas were crazy. Just look at this nonsense:

What stands out the most, besides the real shots, is the aggression with which Curry hunts them. He’s been in this mode for a while, unlike the start of the season, when he was playing slow things, relatively speaking, trying to allow the new Warriors to find their balance before he hit the turbo button.

In his last 10 games, Curry, who has up to 42.5 percent of three for the season, is hitting 50 percent of the triples (58 to 116). In his last eight games, he reached 52 percent (49 to 94). When you think about the way he is being protected, two and three bodies surrounding him in almost every corner, box and one, traps, the whole defense changing for every move you make like a flower in the sun, with poor teammates. thrown in to stifle his spacing and encourage an even more desperate defense in Curry, to think that he is still playing at those rates that border on insanity.

Look, I just have to get this off my chest. Five weeks ago, I tweeted this:

I am the dumbest man in the world. I won’t even try to explain where I came from when I put that blasphemous trash to the world. Damian Lillard is a stone-cold superstar, but Steph Curry, still 32, is an authentic mutant who has never been a citizen of this planet.

As for Doncic, who is next to Lillard and James Harden in the fight for the throne of the best shipowner in the non-Curry world, he needed this. The dirty secret that Doncic was never a good 3-point pitcher is being shouted out today, as he was hitting just 29% of his triples on Saturday when he hit 7 of 12 from the center by adding 11 assists and seven rebounds to go with your 42 points.

You can see in some of these clips that Golden State was giving Doncic a touch of airspace, not necessarily inviting him to shoot 3 points, but certainly not selling himself to stop him. This is smart. Again, he was under 30 percent out of three entering the game. Play the numbers.

But many of those setbacks and finishes on the track were well defended. Doncic is so special, and as the Mavs start to get healthy, he’s a guy who can take them out of whack and get back to the middle of the playoff race in a matter of weeks. Saturday night was a great start. In the final stretch, Doncic came face to face with the greatest pitcher of all time, scoring 11 points and four assists in the fourth period.

Doncic hit what appeared to be a staggering 3 points to give Dallas a seven point advantage with 43 seconds to play, but that alien named Curry was not finished, ending an old-fashioned 3-point play and splashing another rainbow stride. come back 3 to pull the Warriors into one with 28 seconds to play – enough time to stop, ask for a timeout and try the winner of the game.

But Doncic did not let the Warriors stop, leading a double team and calmly sending a pass to the corner, where Maxi Kleber hit the 3 that he finally sealed for Dallas. Footnote: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at least the missed call flagrantly with less than a minute to play, which certainly played some role in the result.

Yes, that ball is out of bounds, outside Kristaps Porzingis, and no, the referees didn’t see it. Possession of the ball continued and, a few seconds later, Doncic hit the aforementioned 3-point basket to put Dallas ahead of seven. Obviously, a 3 point that should never have been tried is a big deal in a two point game, but we are not going to spoil this epic duel by talking about a missed call. This was Luka’s night. It was Curry’s night. It was the night of the fans, and you can only imagine how crazy they would be if they were in the building to testify.