SAN FRANCISCO — Aaron Gordon’s 10th and final made 3 on Thursday night at Chase Center felt like the final dagger. It came with 26 seconds left in regulation, putting the visiting Denver Nuggets up by three and punctuating a career night for the 12th-year forward.
But the biggest perimeter fireworks show in Gordon’s life happened to come against the greatest shooter of all time.
Five seconds later, out of a timeout, Stephen Curry stepped into a semi-contested 34-footer off a screen and buried it to tie the score. Five minutes later, after Curry opened overtime with another made 3 and closed it with two free throws, the Golden State Warriors finished a 137-131 win to overshadow Gordon’s 50-point masterpiece.
“The bigger the moment, the more he rises,” Draymond Green said of Curry. “He’s this quiet guy … but he loves the show. Anytime there’s a show to be put on, he’s going to do it.”
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Gordon’s stat line was jaw-dropping: 50 points on 17-of-21 shooting and 10-of-11 from 3. He made eight straight 3s to open the game, one shy of an NBA record.
“Ridiculous,” Curry said. “Whatever he did this summer, it worked.”
Two seasons ago, Gordon made only 29% of his 1.9 attempted 3s per game. Last season, he made a significant leap, hitting 43.6% of his 3.4 per game.
But Thursday night’s performance was altogether different. Gordon had never made more than seven 3s in a game. Against the Warriors, he became only the 17th player in history to make 10 3s in a losing effort. That has happened to Curry seven times and no other player more than once.
This time, Curry was the one delivering disappointment to quell a special night. Curry’s 42 points — on 14-of-25 shooting and six 3s — were the second most he has scored in his 17 home openers. The Warriors struggled when he was off the floor against the Nuggets but won his minutes by 15 points.
“The shot he made to tie it toward the end [of regulation], it’s a shot that only he can make,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said.
The Warriors’ biggest strategic choice of the night came late in the fourth quarter. During a timeout huddle, assistant coaches Terry Stotts and Chris DeMarco suggested to head coach Steve Kerr that he deploy a bigger lineup of Curry, Jimmy Butler, Jonathan Kuminga, Green and the newly acquired Al Horford.
It’s a five-man, jumbo-sized grouping (by Warriors’ standards) that Kerr said he hadn’t even thought about using during training camp. They had never even practiced together.
“Where we going to score?” Kerr said. “That was my biggest concern. Could we execute [offensively]? But [Stotts and DeMarco] reminded me we have Steph and Jimmy, and they’ll find a way to score.”
The use of a larger lineup for the typically smaller Warriors allowed them to match up better defensively, especially with Horford’s ability to switch at the center position and Kuminga’s continued growth as a two-way wing to open his fifth season.
“It was really fun to watch a group that’s never played together close a game against one of the best teams in the league,” Kerr said.
That five-man group erased a seven-point Denver lead in the final 3:50 of regulation and beat the Nuggets by six in overtime.
“I did [previously] think that was a possibility to be a closing lineup,” Green said. “Or a starting lineup. Or a middle of the game lineup.”
The win moved the Warriors to 2-0, gathering some early momentum as they try to establish themselves as a legitimate conference contender in the Denver tier. The Nuggets (0-1) travel home to face the Suns on Saturday night.
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