With Stephen Curry playing some of the best basketball of his career and six wins in the last eight games, the Golden State Warriors were riding high as they hosted the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday. In addition to their encouraging recent play, the Warriors had home-court advantage against the Mavericks and, for good measure, Dallas was on the second night of a back-to-back while Golden State rested on Monday. However, none of that manifested in the first half of a nationally televised tilt and the results were staggeringly poor for Golden State.
The Warriors scored 29 (yes, 29) points in the first 24 minutes against the Mavericks, trailing by a 33-point margin at the halftime break. Along the way, Golden State yielded a 28-0 run to Dallas that perfectly encapsulated the half.
Jalen Brunson drilled this triple to cap off a 28-0 Mavs run
pic.twitter.com/Ncab68UtEk
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 28, 2021
Ironically, the Warriors actually led the game 12-11 when Curry connected on a three-pointer with 8:40 remaining in the opening quarter. From there, the Mavericks used those 28 straight points to key a 51-17 overall run, effectively ending the game before halftime even arrived.
Curry was the only Warriors player to reach double figures, scoring 12 first-half points, but Golden State wasn’t even competitive in his minutes. As a team, the Warriors shot just 8-for-39 from the floor (20.5 percent) and 3-for-19 from three-point range (15.8 percent). Those numbers are unsightly enough, but Golden State committed 12 turnovers, compared to just five assists, and the Mavericks had more three-pointers (nine) than the Warriors had field goals (eight).
In this highly unusual regular season, extreme results seem to be the norm. Still, this was an outlier among outliers, and it is hard to imagine a more lopsided half of basketball, particularly on the large stage of a Tuesday night TNT broadcast.
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