by Jessica Kwong
LOS ANGELES – If the Golden State Warriors didn’t go into Los Angeles with a sure win on Tuesday night, it became all but guaranteed a couple hours before tipoff, when the Lakers announced that Kobe Bryant would not play due to a sore right shoulder.
As expected, the Warriors claimed a 109-88 victory over the Lakers – who since the New Year were on a three-game winning streak, impressive for their standards. The biggest concern for Golden State during the lopsided match was that their star Stephen Curry kept getting kicked in the same bruised spot on his lower left shin, and kept going in and out of the game until he did not return.
Afterward, Curry called his injured shin, “a magnet, but I’ll be alright.”
“Yes it’s frustrating and annoying and there are a lot of adjectives you want throw in there,” he said. “Long-term, it’s not something that I have to worry about, it’s just playing through an injury that’s there. It doesn’t get worse if I play on it, unless I get kicked, and that’s happened three times since I did it. Hopefully it won’t keep happening again.”
Curry added that he’s been “trying all sorts of pads and stuff,” but he’s not worried about it when he’s out on the floor and that’s his goal.
Warriors’ Interim Coach Luke Walton said he didn’t take the game out of Curry’s hands when he wanted to play – despite Golden State’s double-digit lead throughout – because trainers said Curry could be out on the floor.
“I played with a guy like that,” Walton said, drawing a comparison. “Kobe wouldn’t sit out for anything. Most of the time, he was still able to play at a level that made us a better team. Occasionally, he was shooting left-handed three pointers because he couldn’t lift his right shoulder and Phil (Jackson) had to take him out.”
“But you give players of that caliber the benefit of the doubt – unless the staff says he shouldn’t be there and then we’ll pull him out.”
The game at Staples Center started off competitive, with both teams tied at 12 points, but that only lasted about half of the first quarter. The Warriors took the lead but the Lakers – also without D’Angelo Russell due to a sore throat, kept within about 10 points of the defending champions through the second quarter.
By the second half, the Warriors’ lead snowballed, reaching some 30 points, and dipping down into the 20’s occasionally as the Lakers attempted to fight back. Golden State’s Draymond Green said his team could have shut out Los Angeles at the start of the third quarter, and finally did so by the end of the quarter.
“I think we played ok. I think we played good,” Green said. “I just think, for a while there we could of put them away and we didn’t. And we kind of kept letting them stick around. Other than that, I think we played really well.”
Klay Thompson, the Warriors’ leading scorer with 36 points, called their 33-2 record “surreal.”
“It feels like we’re a good team, but this good” was hard to believe for him. He attributed it to depth and his teammates making sacrifices.
Green came short of a fourth consecutive triple-double.
“Y’all were expecting that. I was just out there trying to do what I do, but it didn’t happen, oh well, I really don’t care,” Green said. “Good game, I didn’t play a good game but we did, so I’m cool with that.”
The Warriors face the Trail Blazers in Portland on Friday.
Sports Radio Service 