Steph Curry Has A Steph Curry Game

If you thought anything at all like "this Warriors-Mavericks game tonight isn't worth staying up late for," you should immediately smack yourself in the head. Hard. It has been true for at least a season now, but the point was driven home especially forcefully tonight: The Golden State Warriors are always worth your time, especially if they are on national television.

For the first quarter, though, you'd be forgiven for having some confusion. On nearly every single Warriors possession, it looked like the Mavericks knew exactly what play they would run, and they forced bad shot after bad shot. Those bad shots led to easy baskets on the other end, and the Mavericks raced out to a 24-4 lead just seven minutes into the game. That is the last time they would feel comfortable, as they would go on to lose 128-114.

After the Warriors steadied the ship towards the end of the quarter—it ended with them down 42-25—they looked like the Warriors for the rest of the game, while the Mavericks looked like the Knicks. More specifically, Steph Curry decided to have one of his every-other-month Steph Curry games, and the Mavericks were powerless to stop it. With Rajon Rondo out—and I don't even know if he could have checked Curry tonight—they were forced to throw a pu pu platter of Monta Ellis, Raymond Felton, J.J. Barea, and Devin Harris at him, who collectively didn't stand an ice cube's chance in hell.

The dirtiest of his 51 points is GIFed above, where he decided to have some fun with Felton with the game already in hand to push his point total past 50. But he did it all enroute to a 26 point third quarter: step back threes, threes from across the state line, crossovers, etc. You know, the usual.

With Klay Thompson surprisingly morphing into the Scottie Pippen to Curry's Jordan—I know, I know, but please let me just enjoy this—opposing defenses have to work incredibly hard to prevent both of them from absolutely going off. Dorrell Wright knows what's up.

And just for good measure, you should see this too.