Orlando Magic’s best not enough for Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors

The Orlando Magic put on a show for the home crowd and went punch for punch with the Golden State Warriors. But Stephen Curry was far too much to withstand.

The Orlando Magic had to go point for point with the Golden State Warriors because what Stephen Curry was doing on the other end was simply unstoppable.

The Magic could throw everything they had at Stephen Curry — Aaron Gordon dunks in transition, active defense from Nikola Vucevic, Evan Fournier dropping 3-pointers, Elfrid Payton driving into the lane and Victor Oladipo chasing Curry around screens — and that still would not be enough.

Orlando fought hard in a 130-114 loss to Golden State in front of a sellout crowd at Amway Center on Thursday. But it was not enough to topple the defending champions.

Stephen Curry (GSW) — 51 pts., 7 rebs., 8 assts.; Marreese Speights (GSW) — 14 pts.
Evan Fournier (ORL) — 20 pts.; Aaron Gordon (ORL) — 19 pts., 8 rebs.

Not when Curry is pulling up from mid-court for 3-pointers at the third quarter buzzer, completing a 24-point quarter for himself and a 40-point quarter for the Warriors that gave them an eight-point lead heading to the final 12 minutes. Not when Curry was weaving his way through decent enough defense and lulling help defenders to sleep as they tried desperately to stop him. Not when Curry was stepping back for 3-pointers.

What is there to do to stop him? What is there to do to stop the Golden State Warriors?

Golden State needed every bit of Stephen Curry’s 51 points to hold off a very game Orlando squad. The Magic were active enough defensively to keep themselves in it until finally the Warriors snapped to attention and joined Curry in the scoring barrage.

“All those threes were daggers,” Victor Oladipo said. “Every three is important. Every shot he made was important. That’s why he is who he is for them.”

Curry’s 3-pointer from half court seemed to be the straw that broke the Magic’s spirit. Exiting the third quarter down eight instead of five points seemed backbreaking. As Aaron Gordon put it after the game, those shots do not give the Magic a chance to answer.

For much of the first three quarters, Orlando answered again and again every time Golden State tried to lose contact and pull away.

Gordon was a big part of that in scoring a career-high-tying 19 points on 9-for-14 shooting. In the third quarter he provided his own highlight with a long leap from the foul line for a dunk over a backpedaling Draymond Green, just trying to get out of the poster.

All five Orlando starters scored in double figures with Evan Fournier leading the way with 20 points. The ball largely zipped around quickly and found open shooters. The Magic took what few misses they did get from the Warriors and get opportunities in transition or semi-transition.

Orlando attacked the basket really well and got to the foul line 28 times including 17 times in the first half. They were right there punch for punch with the best team in the league even with Curry going bonkers.

“I thought we played very well,” Gordon said. “Just down the stretch we needed more shots to go down for us. Less mistakes. You have to play a very close to perfect game to beat them. And we didn’t do that.”

The imperfections were apparent.

Curry was getting his points. The Warriors shot better than 50 percent for much of the game — ending at 60.2 percent and 20 for 27 from Curry, the Warriors shot 54.1 percent outside of Curry.

Essentially through that third quarter, the Magic were trading twos for threes. As Gordon was hitting his shots or Nikola Vucevic or whoever, Curry was hitting threes or the Warriors were matching. Golden State could not quite shake Orlando but the team was in the lead.

The Warriors turned the ball over 21 times for 21 Magic points, giving the Magic every opportunity to keep pace and stay in the game.

And with how sloppy Golden State was playing, it was only a matter of time before that avalanche came as Golden State snapped to attention.

“You can do everything right against him and he can still make tough shots,” coach Scott Skiles said. “But we hit a lot of screens tonight and kind of died on them. The margin of error for us is thin. For any team to beat us it was thin. We were taking shots and jogging back, they are going to make easy baskets. We didn’t make it hard enough on them.”

Skiles said the defense did not provide a ton of resistance. The goal was to take away the 3-pointer and it appeared the team was able to do that for much of the first half. Golden State was able to beat Orlando on back cuts and then the 3-pointers started falling and that put the team in trouble.

Golden State is just one of those teams where even a good effort is not enough.

It could easily be argued it was not Curry that won Golden State the game, but really Marreese Speights. To start the fourth quarter, Golden State scored four unanswered points from Speights to push the lead out 12 points. The Magic would get it to single digits just once more before the Warriors pushed it beyond for good.

Orlando’s bench unit, needing to retake momentum, lost it again and the Warriors were starting to roll downhill to the end of the game.

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Speights had eight of his 14 points in the final quarter. The offense finally slowed down fo rthe Magic as they could not get to the foul line and could not score at the rate the Warriors were.

“I think we scored enough points,” Oladipo said. “They scored more than us. We’ve got to do a better job of getting stops and doing a better job playing collective defense.”

In the end, Golden State outscored Orlando. There was no defense for what Curry did.