The undermanned Warriors lose to the 76ers, 106-118, as expected, after briefly raising hopes.
The Warriors shoot the lights out in the first quarter, Klay Thompson is cold and then damaging in the fourth quarter, Kevon Looney barely misses out on a triple-double, and more.
The result of tonight’s game, a loss, was pretty much set in stone when Steph Curry got injured two nights ago. With Curry out for at least the next two weeks, if not longer — Curry hinted that he may still need surgery on his injured shoulder during the offseason and alluded to pain management being something he’ll have to account for upon his return — it was all but certain the Warriors would lose to the 76ers, who are led by the grifting duo of James Harden and Joel Embiid. This is to say, I’m ok with the Warriors’ decision to rest Draymond Green tonight and let Andrew Wiggins get a little more time to rehabilitate his oblique strain.
The Warriors ended up playing the 76ers, who were missing Tobias Harris and Tyrese Maxey, fairly well, considering the context. With under two minutes left in the game, the Warriors still had chances to make an improbable late-game push. Tonight’s game wasn’t exactly a moral victory but the Warriors kept it close while resting Draymond for a more winnable game against a Toronto Raptors team that is 3-7 in their last 10 games. That’s an ok result if you never expected tonight’s game to be winnable.
For a brief and glorious moment, it seemed that the Warriors might actually outplay the 76ers on the road. Donte DiVincenzo scored 15 points in the first quarter — his career-high in any quarter — on five made threes and the Warriors got off to a blistering hot start where they shot 9/10 from the field before the 76ers’ first timeout. DiVincenzo was obviously not likely to keep shooting the ball like Steph Curry for the whole game, but his big first quarter gave the Warriors some buffer to survive the inevitable regression to the mean.
After exploding for 38 points on 9/12 shooting from deep in the first quarter, the Warriors took a lead into halftime after surviving both James Wiseman minutes — there will be more words on him at the end of this post — and later, an ineffective zone defense that Joel Embiid happily cut up from the middle of the floor. Embiid opened the third quarter with two straight buckets and gave the 76ers their first lead of the night, which seemed to portend doom, but Jordan Poole, who finished the night with 29 points on 20 shots, got hot and helped the Warriors take back a 6-point lead, but the Warriors started to run out of steam and did not lead again for the rest of the night.
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