With little more than five minutes remaining in Thursday’s pivotal late-season game against the Portland Trail Blazers, Stephen Curry limped to the sidelines, barely concealing his annoyance. The superstar of the Golden State Warriors, obviously irritated by Steve Kerr’s choice to give him a brief break as crunch time approached, kept shaking his head as he sat down on the bench and play continued.

Curry’s blow was fortunately averted for the Warriors by Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, who called a timeout only seconds after the two-time MVP was substituted out of the contest. For the next possession, a rejuvenated Curry returned to the court and made a strong case for Clutch Player of the Year while leading the shorthanded Dubs to an important victory of 100-92.

In order for the Warriors to overcome a subpar overall showing in Portland, defense was essential. The truth that the rebuilding Blazers were without multiple key rotation players on Thursday was made clear when Golden State locked down defensively at crucial moments, preventing Billups’ club from scoring a field goal for an astounding six and a half minutes in the fourth quarter.

Sort of a jagged, jerky game. I was obviously missing shots everywhere,” Curry admitted after the game. “We know they’re going to play hard, play with energy, disrupt everything we’re doing, and for the most part, if worked for 42 minutes, because they have a lineup that we understand their circumstances.” Then, in the last stretch, we simply became extremely disciplined.

Curry apologizes for his usual modesty. Golden State’s late-game supremacy was not merely the result of Kevon Looney controlling the board, Brandin Podziemski’s tenacious defense of Scoot Henderson, or a team-wide dedication to cutting down the floor. That improvement was at least as much a result of Curry’s unique scoring prowess, which lifted the Dubs out of an extremely disheartening defeat.

Curry took this action right away following that quick substitution right before the crunch. After breaking away from Looney’s screen in a post-split “gaggle,” and taking advantage of DeAndre Ayton’s drop defense, was there any doubt this right-wing triple was going to drop?

On Golden State’s subsequent trip down, Curry took matters even further into his own hands, using three different screens from Looney to finally locate him for an easy finish in an empty-corner pick-and-roll.

In the last quarter, Curry finished with eight points and three assists on 3-of-5 shooting. The game looked to be slipping away when he broke a worrying Warriors drought with a left-wing three with less than eight minutes remaining, bringing the team within three points of Portland. As a result of the Blazers sending numerous players to stop him, all of his assists were for layups.

Curry didn’t have one of his most productive or most impressive fourth quarters in a season full of them. Nevertheless, without further clutch play from the best player in franchise history, Golden State fails to defeat Rip City and maintains its hopes of securing the eighth spot in the West.

“You never find it surprising because Steph has done that a million times. On the postgame podium, Steve Kerr stated, “Obviously, it wasn’t his best shooting night, but made some big ones down the stretch and competed really well.” “We did not play him as much as we would have liked, but we finished the game, and now we have the opportunity to play New Orleans tomorrow, get a win, and put ourselves in a good position.”