Curry Scores Playoff Career-High 50 as Warriors Down Kings

Date: 01 May 2023 - 22:32

News ID: ۱۱۴۵۴۵

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — With his big-game swagger on display for the world and that signature mouthpiece dangling from a celebratory grin, Stephen Curry drove fearlessly to the basket with jaw-dropping acrobatics all afternoon and he fired with precision from way back in a Game 7 extravaganza for the ages.

He even playfully pretended to push the button and Light the Beam, Sacramento-style.

Curry scored a playoff career-high 50 points in the most prolific Game 7 performance ever and answered time and again to will the Warriors on in their quest for a repeat, sending Golden State into the Western Conference semifinals with a 120-100 win against the Sacramento Kings in Sunday’s winner-take-all Game 7.

Curry led a memorable comeback in the series, too, perhaps improbable even for the defending champions when they got down 2-0 and given their road woes all season.

Curry’s points are the most in NBA history in a Game 7, topping former teammate Kevin Durant’s 48 for the Nets against Milwaukee in 2021.

Kevon Looney grabbed 21 rebounds for a Warriors team that needed to win twice on the road facing a hostile, cowbell-clanging crowd in the state capital to become the first reigning champion to drop the first two games and win any postseason series.

Now, bring on LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals with all that NBA Finals history between James and Golden State dating to his Cleveland days. Game 1 is Tuesday night at Chase Center.

Sacramento’s special comeback season is over long before these young Kings had planned. After snapping a 16-year playoff drought — longest in NBA history — under Coach of the Year Mike Brown, playoff-starved Sacramento missed advancing to the second round for the first time since 2004.

Curry shot 20 of 38 with seven 3s and delivered after almost every big play by Sacramento as Splash Brother Klay Thompson struggled on both ends again. But Thompson came through in some crucial moments.