NBA score: Heat beat Steph Curry and the Warriors

To put it bluntly, the Golden State Warriors had no excuse for losing to the Miami Heat on Tuesday night. The Warriors were well-rested: playing their sixth straight game at home, they didn’t play on Monday, and you could argue they didn’t play Sunday either, when they barely showed up to be run off the court. of the Sacramento Kings.

The Heat, on the other hand, not only played on Monday, but played a double-overtime affair that didn’t end until late at night. And they played without Jimmy Butler, who has been suspended by the team.

But the Warriors didn’t care if they had an excuse or not. They were bent on losing by any means necessary, and they lost.

Things started well on the defensive end of the court, where the Warriors immediately clamped down on Miami’s offense. Unfortunately, the Dubs’ offense was flatter than flat. While they forced bad shots and turnovers, they settled for bad shots and made confusing decisions on that end of the court.

The game slowed down, which played into Miami’s hand. Even though Steph Curry had a little flurry, the Warriors trailed 29-23 after one.

They were somehow even colder to start the second quarter. No one could find the basket until Curry finally put a pair of shots in the hoop. At one point, when the Warriors trailed 42-29, Curry had shot 5-for-10 from the field … and his teammates had combined to shoot 6-for-27. Curry almost single-handedly started to make the scoring respectable before Miami ran away with it again. At the half, the Warriors trailed 61-48, with Curry the only bright spot with 20 points.

The second half started ominously, with Draymond Green not returning to the court until about 30 seconds into the game. Miami remained in control, but then Golden State got a breakout from an unexpected source: starting center Trayce Jackson-Davis, who began to take over the game. Even with Curry on the bench, the Warriors clawed their way back into the game and trailed just 84-78 entering the final frame.

For a few seconds it looked like they were going to get over the hump. They came out in the fourth quarter with a great defensive effort, and Curry caught fire again. A few minutes in, the Miami lead had shrunk to a single point.

And then the Warriors forgot how to score. The Heat rattled off a 27-8 run that took us well into garbage time and made the fourth quarter almost completely uncompetitive. As the Warriors starters sulked on the bench, the buzzer rang signaling a 114-98 Heat victory.

Curry finished with 31 points, although for the second night in a row he had four turnovers without a single assist. Jackson-Davis added a season-high 19 points on 9-for-12 shooting, but Buddy Hield, who needed 12 shots to score 11 points, was the only other Warrior to score in double figures (Miami, meanwhile, had six players in double figures).

The Heat shot 40.0% from three-point range and earned 17 shots at the free throw line, while the Dubs shot just 28.0% and had a paltry five attempts from the charity stripe. Curry went 8-for-17 from distance, but his teammates combined to shoot just 6-for-33 from beyond the arc.

Golden State fell back to .500 and will now hit the road for a tough four-game road trip. Things are not pretty, folks.