





SAN ANTONIO – Everyone else on these Golden State Warriors had marched grudgingly into the huddle now, but Stephen Curry's eyes stayed with the shooter. As Manu Ginobili left the floor with 1.2 seconds left in double overtime, he leaped into the arms of Tim Duncan on the San Antonio Spurs' sideline.

All this noise tumbled down onto the AT&T Center floor, all these years washed away, and there Curry stood marveling over the magnificence of Manu's magical moment. All this noise tumbled down out of the rafters, out of those four championship banners, and Curry had begun to consider the consequences of leaving him too much time on the clock, leaving him one more shot to transform this hysteria into a stunned silence.

Stephen Curry had gone for 44 points, had gone within a whisper of Kobe Bryant's playoff record of 45 on the Spurs. Curry had gone wild on the Spurs, but he wouldn't get the final shot, nor the final word on Monday night.

"Yeah, I'll be thinking about the one I didn't get to take," Curry told Yahoo! Sports late Monday. "You always want that one more opportunity."

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Out of the timeout, the Spurs' Kawhi Leonard wrapped his arms around Curry and refused to let him come over the screen and catch an inbounds pass. The Warriors protested, but as one team official said, "You're never getting that call against them."

After another timeout, the Spurs clustered on Curry, and the ball found its way to Jarrett Jack for a stumbling, off-balance miss that left the Warriors despondent 129-127 Game 1 losers in the Western Conference semifinals.

"This freaking game," Curry mumbled to no one in the losing locker room.

As far back as the kid could remember, this is what the Spurs do in the springtime: They leave basketball stars mumbling to themselves. They leave broken, battered teams wondering what in the world had happened out there.

[Related: Manu Ginobili's winning 3-pointer caps wild comeback for Spurs]

Curry buttoned his shirt, stepped past the tub of ice water in which he had been soaking his aching feet and still found himself shaking his head. The Warriors had the Spurs buried with 4½ minutes left in regulation, had them down 16 points. Tim Duncan, sick with a stomach flu, had gone back to the locker room for several minutes.

And again in these playoffs, the Warriors collapsed. Somehow, they lost an 18-point lead late to Denver in Game 6, but survived. Only, these weren't the Nuggets. These are the Spurs of Duncan and Ginobili, Tony Parker and Gregg Popovich.

"Let them back in," a wise rookie, Draymond Green, said, "and they will execute you to death."

When it was over, Curry walked down the corridor to his news conference and politely shut down a team official trying to console him with context. "Don't blame the age," Curry told him.

He had destroyed the Spurs, had them at his mercy and somehow the Warriors let them go. In the postseason for the first time at 25 years old, Curry has been a dominant force in these playoffs, standing shoulder to shoulder so far with LeBron James and Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony.

Destroying Denver was impressive, but the Spurs are something else. San Antonio's the standard. He hated losing, but the moment wasn't lost on him here.

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