Friday night at Chase Center produced the young season’s defining highlight and two shot-clock era records in the same game, and Saturday brought the morning after: the reaction from inside both rooms, the record book checked and settled, and the first real consequence, which is that Stephen Curry will not play on Sunday. The full story of the game itself is in iimiTV’s breaking report on the Warriors making history in the comeback win over the Lakers.
FINAL: Golden State Warriors 112, Los Angeles Lakers 95. Golden State trailed 38-15 after one quarter and by 25 early in the second, tied the game 53-53 at halftime, and won its third straight to open NBA Cup group play at 1-0. Curry scored 31 points with eight three-pointers, and Luka Doncic scored a game-high 37 in the loss.
Next for Golden State: Los Angeles Clippers at Golden State Warriors, Sunday, November 1, 2026, 8:30 p.m. ET at Chase Center
Next for Los Angeles: Toronto Raptors at Los Angeles Lakers, Sunday, November 1, 2026, 9:00 p.m. ET at Crypto.com Arena
Stephen Curry Crossover On Luka Doncic, The Morning After
The play itself needs no rebuilding here: midway through the third quarter, with the Lakers still up nine, Curry isolated Doncic on the perimeter, sent him to the floor with a series of moves, and stepped back for the three that cut the lead and lit the building. Prime Video’s Michael Grady gave it the call it will be replayed with, “Doncic touches earth,” and the NBA’s official account posted the clip the same night: the league’s post of the crossover is on X here. Curry, watching it back on the Prime post-game show, kept his own review short: “I was just trying to get a little bit of space. I didn’t expect it to get that nasty, but it was one of those you gotta kind of keep your composure. I haven’t been that open in a long time.” ESPN’s NBA channel cut Curry’s whole night, all 31 points and eight threes, into one package:
The fuller Curry explanation came in the press conference, and it was about the response, not the highlight. “Luka had an unbelievable first quarter,” Curry told reporters. “He looked very determined coming into the night. Our offense got stagnant, turnovers the first four or five minutes were just deflating. But we had a lot of chatter at the end of the first quarter about how we were supposed to respond, and it was kind of cool to see the second unit, and just the overall execution on both ends in the second quarter. We turned them over a good amount, got in transition, got better spacing so we could move the ball and get open threes, and a couple shots started to go to flip the score like we did at the half, and hold them under 95 after a 38-point first quarter is pretty impressive from everybody.”
There was an edge under the game, and Curry named it himself. Doncic’s opening-night clash with Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg carried into Friday, and Curry confirmed the veterans took it personally. “That’s part of it, for sure. Have your brother’s back,” he said. “But it’s also, and even his role in the game, we gotta win the game, and what that means is keep making Luka’s life as hard as possible. You know he’s the leading scorer in the league right now, the way he started that first quarter was ridiculous, and it was going to require everybody to be a little more physical, a little more connected and kinda withstand some of his flurries that he had. Of course there’s backing Yaxel up, and that’s a collective energy we need to win this game.” Lendeborg, for his part, ranked the crossover on Doncic as his second favourite play of all time. Doncic had almost predicted the matchup problem himself at Lakers media day, when he was asked which player makes life hardest for him: “Probably say Steph. He just runs around, and then you can’t give him no space.”
Doncic Took The Floor Play, Then Took The Handshakes
What settled overnight, and what the highlight clips do not show, is how Doncic handled the worst of it. He answered Curry’s three with a deep three of his own on the next possession, finished with 37 points, seven rebounds and five assists, and after the buzzer he stayed on the floor to congratulate the Warriors players, Curry included, rather than heading straight to the locker room. The gesture travelled as far as the play did. “Luka showed me a lot by congratulating the Warriors stars, especially Steph, who ‘broke his ankles,'” Skip Bayless posted. It is a small thing that reads bigger a day later: the league’s leading early-season scorer lost a 25-point lead, became the other half of the season’s most replayed highlight, and still closed the night shaking hands. The NBA’s official highlights carry the whole arc, from Doncic’s 21-point first quarter to the 33-8 Golden State run that ended it:
The loss drops Los Angeles to 4-2 and 0-1 in NBA Cup group play, and it evens the season series at 1-1 after the Lakers won the opener 127-105 on October 21. For a team that scored 38 in the first quarter, the number that lingers is 15, its fourth-quarter total, against a defence that forced 22 turnovers on the night. The Lakers get no time to sit with it: Toronto is at Crypto.com Arena on Sunday night, with Scottie Barnes arriving off 41-point and 28-point outings in his last two games, and the Barnes on Doncic matchup is the one the whole league will be watching in the late window.
The Record Book, One Day Later
With a day to check the books, both of Friday’s marks hold, and the company around them is now precise. AP writer Josh Dubow’s settled list of the biggest wins in the shot-clock era by a team that trailed by 20 or more at the end of the first quarter reads: Golden State’s 17-point win on Friday (down 23 after one), Golden State’s 14-point win over Chicago on March 4, 1976 (down 23), and Minnesota’s 13-point win over Indiana on December 21, 2007 (down 20). The Warriors now own the top two entries on that list, 50 years apart. The second mark stands as first reported: no team in the shot-clock era, playoffs included, had ever trailed by 23 or more after the first quarter and reached halftime tied or better, until Golden State answered a 38-15 quarter with a 38-15 quarter of its own.
Curry’s quieter milestone also has its next line written now. His fourth-quarter three moved him past Dominique Wilkins and his 26,668 career points into 18th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, and the name directly above him is Oscar Robertson, close enough that one more 40-point night of the kind Curry produced at Minnesota on Wednesday, when he scored 44, would put the conversation back on the floor within the week. Put the two games together and the 38-year-old has scored 75 points in three nights, in his 17th season, with the second of them coming in a game his team trailed by 25. The NBA Cup math settled with the records: Golden State is 1-0 in a group with the Lakers, San Antonio, Portland and Sacramento, and in a format where point differential is a group tiebreaker, a plus-17 banked from a 25-point hole is worth more than the win alone.
Sunday Brings The Bill: Curry Sits, Both Teams Play On
The morning after also delivered the weekend’s real news. Curry is listed out for Sunday’s home game against the Los Angeles Clippers, under right knee injury management on the Warriors’ injury report, and he is not the only absence: Draymond Green is out under low-back injury management, and Jimmy Butler III, Moses Moody and Kristaps Porzingis are all out as well. It is the front end of a back-to-back, with the whole league playing Monday and no games on Tuesday for Election Day, and Golden State has chosen rest over momentum for the players who built Friday’s comeback. The load falls where Friday’s second quarter said it could: Brandin Podziemski, who scored 21 with six assists against the Lakers, and De’Anthony Melton, who scored 16 off the bench with 13 in the fightback quarter, project as the starting backcourt, with rookie Lendeborg asked to create far more than he did on Friday, when he fouled out with six points.
The Clippers arrive at Chase Center at 1-4, on a four-game losing streak, beaten 127-101 at Minnesota on Friday, and missing Brandon Ingram and Bradley Beal among their own long list of absences. A rested-out Warriors team is still favoured at home, which says as much about the Clippers’ week as it does about Golden State’s depth. Tip is 8:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, and whatever happens, it happens without the player who made Friday historic. That, in the end, is the shape of this morning after: the records are in the book, the crossover is in the league’s permanent highlight rotation, Doncic took his handshakes and his home reset against Toronto, and the Warriors’ three-game win streak now has to survive a night with its author in street clothes. If the bench that saved Friday can also win Sunday, the comeback stops being a miracle story and starts being a team story, and that is the version Golden State actually needs.
