Golden State’s Curry out for 2nd straight game

“If it is, it was a lot of fun”, said Walton, who won without Curry, Festus Ezeli, Harrison Barnes and Leandro Barbosa available to play.

The Golden State Warriors fizzled without red hot Stephen Curry on Wednesday, falling 114-91 to the Mavericks in Dallas in just their second defeat of the National Basketball Association season.

The Golden State Warriors’ NBA title defence has been hit by a spate of injuries to their players, an issue they did not have to grapple with in their triumphant previous season.

Curry could miss Thursday’s game against the Houston Rockets again leaving the Warriors vulnerable against a league primed to attack the defending champs. Overnight, a team that is putting itself in the conversation with the greatest teams in history looked like a borderline lottery team without its leader, and while presumably the Warriors would eventually adjust and get better should Curry miss any kind of extended time, nothing about Wednesday’s performance felt like a real anomaly. “It was just one of those nights”.

Indiana, which closed within two points before Middleton’s big free throws, trailed by as many as 16 points in the fourth quarter, losing for a second consecutive night. George Hill added 15 points and six rebounds (see full recap).

Reserve guard Ian Clark led the Warriors with 21 points. They did play good defense.

DeAndre Jordan grabbed 20 rebounds to go with 11 points, and Crawford finished with 15 points for Los Angeles.

Houston led by 3 points about 3 minutes later when Golden State scored 10 straight points to take a 88-80 lead with less than a minute left in the quarter.

Milwaukee got its first win of the season over an opponent that shot 50 percent or better from the field.

Will Barton, traded by Portland to Denver last season, led the Nuggets with 31 points.

But despite the Warriors clearly being out of sync without their MVP, they aren’t going to make excuses while he’s missing games. Obviously without him out there, the spacing won’t be as good, the drags that we like doing so much aren’t as effective.

“I think people forget we’ve got like four guys out”, said Andre Iguodala, who had 12 points. As ever, though, Houston’s biggest issues came at the defensive end, where they were beaten backdoor often and regularly lagged in transition to give up easy buckets.

NEW ORLEANS – Chris Paul shook off a miserable shooting night to nail a 17-foot fadeaway jumper with a minute left, lifting Los Angeles to a victory over New Orleans. Head Coach Luke Walton tried to fill the point guard position with many different players, but you can not match the effect that Curry has when he is on the court.

Forward LaMarcus Aldridge scored 21 points and pulled down 12 rebounds despite sitting out the entire fourth quarter as the San Antonio Spurs rolled past the Phoenix Suns to remain unbeaten at home.