Until then, fans in the sellout crowd had seemed content to relish their proximity to the star power of the Golden State Warriors, to bask in the ceremonial nostalgia of Kobe Bryant’s final games in the N.B.A., to sit back and enjoy a sleepy, late-season day game. The outcome seemed like a tertiary concern.
But in the second quarter, they peeked up en masse at the scoreboard, and the Los Angeles Lakers were winning. Four minutes into the quarter, D’Angelo Russell drained two 3-pointers in less than half a minute, giving the Lakers a 7-point advantage and causing the arena to fill with aggressive cheers. The lead grew to 14 shortly before halftime, and the highly improbable felt faintly possible.
The unlikely scenes went on, and the noise and tension grew accordingly.
Golden State kept stumbling, and the Lakers kept up the pressure, until the Warriors spiraled to just their sixth loss of the season, 112-95.
Looking around a roomful of reporters at a postgame news conference, Bryant sensed a momentary letup in questions.
“I’m just as speechless as you are about tonight,” he said with a wide smile.
The tone of the contest before it began suggested a crossover episode of a sitcom: Stephen Curry and Bryant, protagonists in two of the league’s most absorbing serial story lines this season, each congenially cohabiting the other’s universe for a few hours under the theater lights of Staples Center.
It was a farewell tour joining a traveling circus. The result seemed like a forgone conclusion. The Warriors (55-6), who are chasing the 72-win record of the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, had been trouncing some of the league’s best teams. If they slipped up, it was not going to be against the Lakers (13-51).
The teams had met three previous times this season, and these were Golden State’s winning scores: 111-77, 109-88 and 116-98.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first time in N.B.A. history that a team with a winning percentage higher than 90 percent played a team with a winning percentage lower than 20 percent at least 50 games into a season.
But the Warriors, for whatever reason, looked lost. They trailed by 60-49 at halftime and had 11 turnovers after two quarters, compared with the Lakers’ one. They finished the game 4 of 30 from 3-point range.
Curry (18 points) and Klay Thompson (15 points) — long ago nicknamed the Splash Brothers for their long-range prowess — shot a combined 13 for 40 from the field, including a remarkable 1 for 18 from 3-point range.
“It was just one of those days you want to avoid at all costs,” Curry said. “But it happened, and we’ll be all right.”
Steve Kerr, the Warriors’ coach, spent most of the game slumped in his seat, his chin burrowed into his hand as he exhaled deeply. He received a technical in the fourth quarter for arguing with the referees.
After the game, Kerr said his players had been careless and unfocused on offense and had not followed the team’s game plan on defense. He said he was happy for the Lakers, and he kept a sense of humor about his own players.
“This team is filled with millennials, and millennials can’t focus,” said Kerr, who has made the relative youth of his team a running joke this season. “We looked like the millennials tonight.”
Before the stunning result, the game represented a meeting of two of the game’s biggest stars at hugely disparate points of their careers.
Bryant arrived at the arena wearing a charcoal-colored suit, a black shirt and a black tie. Curry stepped off the bus looking like a college student, with ripped jeans, a bomber jacket, headphones and a backpack.
Curry thanked Bryant for all that he had done for the game throughout the years. Bryant encouraged Curry to strive to get better, to achieve more.
Bryant had feasted on Golden State during his long career. He entered the game having made 624 baskets in 66 games against the Warriors in his career, his most against any one opposing team. Bryant played a little more than 24 minutes on Sunday, contributing 12 points while shooting 4 for 14 from the field.
But the Lakers received contributions from all over their young, unaccomplished roster.
Russell had 17 points in the first half and finished with 21. Jordan Clarkson led all scorers with 25. Nick Young drained two 3-pointers within the first three minutes of the fourth quarter, effectively stanching the Warriors’ comeback chances. And Marcelo Huertas, the Lakers’ hirsute backup point guard, levitated for multiple crafty finishes at the rim and doled out no-look passes to his teammates. Huertas finished with 10 points and 9 assists and received a standing ovation when he left the game.
Bryant said he had been drilling “basketball nerdy things” into the heads of his teammates: angles, timing, rhythm. He said the win was not significant, but he added that it would help his young teammates grasp the point of their labor.
“For young guys, I think it’s extremely important to see the results of that,” Bryant said.
The afternoon, then, provided an unlikely treat for the fans. But with less than two minutes remaining, they seemed to remember why they were there, and the arena filled with chants of “Ko-be! Ko-be! Ko-be!” until the final buzzer sounded.
The players walked off the court. The fans lingered in their seats. Everyone appeared a bit dazed.
Link : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/sports/basketball/stephen-curry-kobe-bryant-golden-state-warriors-los-angeles-lakers.html?_r=0
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