Third-quarter Warriors return in victorious fashion vs. Thunder originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO – During their championship seasons, the Warriors widely were recognized around the NBA as the best third-quarter team in basketball. Time and time again, Golden State would turn close games into blowouts with their dominance coming out of halftime.
While that feeling hasn’t been around much since those days, the magic re-appeared Wednesday night against the best team in basketball.
In the third quarter against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Warriors shot better than 50 percent from the floor, had a slight rebounding advantage and had five players score five points or more to help erase a 10-point halftime deficit.
That momentum carried over into the fourth quarter and helped Golden State hold on for a 116-109 victory. It was a game that signaled to the rest of the NBA that the Warriors might be better than most people thought.
In many ways, the third quarter felt a lot like old times for Stephen Curry.
“It’s why we won the game,” the two-time NBA MVP said. “There’s a decision: Are you going to go lay down and just wave the white flag? We came out and gave ourselves life in that first six minutes. Just to grab a lead and look up like, ‘Oh we got some momentum.’
“That’s huge for the morale of the team, the fact that we could answer every run that they had. It gave us a chance, and then down the stretch we controlled the last 4-5 minutes of the game, which has not been our strong suit. It was a good feeling.”
Although Golden State did a lot of things correctly the whole night, the third quarter was when the game’s momentum shifted.
The Warriors dished out 11 assists on 13 buckets and made five 3-pointers in the third. They also played exceptional defense, limiting the Thunder to 26 points on 9-of-24 shooting.
Gary Payton II got things going for Golden State with a three-point play 69 seconds into the second half. Buddy Hield added a 3-pointer and layup, then Kevon Looney got in on the act with a thunderous dunk that gave the Warriors their first lead of the quarter.
“It was huge,” Looney said. “We got off to a slow start and we kind of got in a hole. That’s a great team over there, so we know we needed to come out [after halftime], punch first and get our crowd behind us if we want any chance to win that game. We responded in that third, and we kept the momentum.”
The challenge now is for the Warriors’ third-quarter momentum to carry over for the rest of the season.
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