Six best moments from Warriors’ win over Cavs

The Golden State Warriors’ chaos results in a Steph Curry buzzer-beating three.

In the first matchup between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, Stephen Curry was, mostly, uninvolved. Cleveland grabbed, pulled, and bumped him and, when they saw the officials weren’t going to award the two-time MVP with the whistle, they did it some more. It was a rough outing for Curry.

After that game, he came out and publicly said he’d like to be more involved, especially in pick-and-roll situations. Since then, he went on a tear. He would go onto win Western Conference Player of the Week. His game was, once again, fun and he was confident.

Despite his improved play, for some it didn’t matter because it wasn’t happening against Kyrie Irving and the Cavaliers. He scored 17 points against them in Game 7 and an extremely quiet 15 points on Christmas Day. Curry needed to do more.

At the end of the first half, Curry had 14 points and 10 assists. It was clear that his approach was much different this time around. He was aggressive early on and none of his baskets were more spectacular than his three to end the first half.

https://twitter.com/warriors/status/821180148380614656

The Warriors were on a fast break with time winding down. Curry had the ball in the middle as he led the three-on-two. He had Andre Iguodala on his left, Kevin Durant on his right, and Richard Jefferson and Iman Shumpert in front of him.

Curry did a poor job of running the break. He probably should have hit Iguodala with a pass because he might have gotten a good look at the rim. Instead, the point guard tried to kick it out to Durant on the wing.

Shumpert got his hand on it and sent the ball to the corner. Durant retrieved it and swung it to Curry who was standing a few feet behind the three-point line. Tristan Thompson lunged, but missed and Curry rose up to launch with just over a second left.

Jefferson tried to contest, but Curry was too far behind the line and too quick with his release to do anything but land on him after the shot was already in mid-air. It dropped through the net, Oracle Arena exploded, and Curry shimmied on his back.

It was a perfect finish to a nearly flawless first half of basketball in an emotional game.