Orlando Magic, Like Everyone Else, Have No Defense for Stephen Curry

The Orlando Magic gave it a college try, but there was no slowing Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors in a 130-114 loss at the Amway Center.

The Orlando Magic knew what the team was biting off when it saw the Golden State Warriors on the schedule. Scott Skiles, too, knows the exploits of Stephen Curry as well as any coach. And no amount of preparation can really be enough to slow a talent like Curry.

Curry lit Orlando up for 51 points while knocking down 10 three pointers. It was enough to rally the Warriors from a four-point halftime deficit to its 52nd victory of the season.

Curry did it all, knocking down an absurd 20 of 27 from the floor, and what perhaps made it even more impressive was that Orlando covered him fairly well.

There is just no defense for a talent that great.

“It’s one thing watching him, it’s another thing when you are on the court with him playing,” Aaron Gordon said. “I think the rate that he makes threes and how consistently he can do it throughout the entire game is incredible. At the beginning of the game he is making threes and in the third quarter he is still making threes. He is making the league better.”

Scott Skiles said part of what makes Curry so tough is that he is able to shoot off screens or off the dribble, that he is able to hit 30 foot fadeaway jumpers. Even with a staunch on-ball defender like Victor Oladipo, Curry had few problems really getting it cooking in this one.

Skiles said Curry tricked the Magic defense so much. He was able to start and stop on a dime, get the defense to rise up and then attack again or dish out to the open man as the defense stared him down even in help. This is Curry’s greatness as much as his shooting exploits.

And those are pretty great too.

Look no further than his half-court bank shot to conclude the third quarter and stick a knife through the Magic. The Warriors already led by five and that triple extended it to eight, giving Orlando a very unlikely scenario by which it could have come back.

Asked if the three felt good when he released it, Curry coyly said, “They always feel pretty good. I know right away if it has a chance or not, but I was in such a groove and got a clean look off the inbound pass and two dribbles. I wouldn’t say we practice it, but we throw them up all the time and sometimes it shows up in games. I made a bunch of threes in the third quarter and finished with that one. It was really funny to me that it banked off the glass and went in.”

It is somewhat tough to imagine being the kind of shooter that can knock down 45-foot heaves and have them “feel good” leaving his hands. He also said that it is a shot he practices, but perhaps most of us already knew that.

Curry was just in that kind of groove where it did not matter where he was shooting from or where the defense was, he was going to make it.

The Magic did provide some resistance to both Curry and the Warriors. He was not unimpressed by his opponents on his night.

“Every team in this league is so talented, and they’re one of them,” Curry said. “They obviously have a lot of young guys. They play with a lot of energy with a new coach. They’re pretty good set in their system and they are going to play. They brought toughness and a great effort. It’s never easy for us to get wins like we did tonight because they played tough. I’m sure they want to sneak into the Playoffs this year, but their future is pretty bright.”

And the Magic did play tough.

Orlando did not back down from the challenge of facing perhaps the greatest team in NBA history. Golden State just used its superior depth and another unfathomable shooting performance from Curry to win this second night of a back to back.

Even being on the latter half of the back-to-back, Curry said he had a lot of energy and that he tried to use it efficiently.

Efficient is knocking down more than two-thirds of 27 field goal attempts while also dishing out seven assists and grabbing seven boards.

There was little that either Elfrid Payton or Victor Oladipo could do to slow him. But that is something coach Scott Skiles and the Magic can live with, because, up until this point, few teams have had any answer for Curry’s play. The Warriors shot 60.2 percent from the field as a team and put five players in double figures.

“At the end of the day, whatever we wanted to do to him, it didn’t work,” Oladipo said. “He had 51. It has to be a collective effort. When he is running through screens or whatever, we’ve got to help each other.”

The Warriors’ depth and balance is one of the things that makes the team so tough, but the cold reality that there is nothing an opposing guard can do to stop Curry is what makes it work. The degree of difficulty on his shots is such that often we would yell, “Don’t shoot that!” if any other player were to attempt the shot.

But with Curry the result is often favorable, often unstoppable — and more than the Magic really had any answers for.

The number of difficult shots he hit makes the 20-for-27 shooting performance all the more impressive.

“Are you guys surprised? I’m not,” Evan Fournier said. “That’s just what he does. I feel like we did a really good job on Green, on Thompson, on Barnes, he just took over. He just made some unbelievable shots.”

Golden State improved to 52-5 while the Magic fell to a humble 25-31. The fact Orlando tallied 68 wins in the previous three seasons while the Warriors won 67 just last year kind of tells the tale of these two franchises.

One is in the midst of becoming a dynasty, while the other is simply still trying to build back toward relevancy.

Related Story: Orlando Magic's best not enough to topple Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors

It was good to see Orlando hang with the Warriors for three quarters, but in the end it was just too much Curry cooking. And not even a defender as good as Oladipo can do anything to slow it.