Third Quarter Dooms Warriors—Lose To Lakers By Eight

The Golden State Warriors played the Los Angeles Lakers close through out three of the four quarters. Unfortunately, after half time ended somebody forgot to tell the Warriors that the game was starting.

Bad passes, turnovers, and fouls were the downfall during that stretch. Even as the effort of the Warriors seemed to be questionable, toward the end of the third quarter the Warriors turned it on. Coming back from an 18-point lead to about six and it should have been closer then that.

Yet, another costly mistake by an official. This time allowing a time out by Sasha Vujacic who actually travelled, but since the the official wasn't paying attention to the feet of Vujacic and was more focused on counting to five he allowed the timeout to happen even though it should have been Warrior ball.

So, what happens after the time out? Vujacic nails a three-pointer giving the Lakers a nine point lead.

Fourth quarter seemed to go back and forth and it seemed like the Lakers had the game well in hand. Another victory over the Warriors for the season sweep, but the Warriors came back again.

Unfortunately, the Warriors effort that was lacking at the beginning of the third quarter came a little bit too late and the Warriors were unable to complete a valiant effort to make a game of it.

Now as stated earlier the Warriors problems started with poor effort at the start of the third quarter. The other problem is that the Warriors didn't go their hot hand and that was Kelenna Azubuike.

Azubuike did end up with a nice stat line 9-15 from the floor including going 5-6 from beyond the arc and 2-2 from the free-throw line which netted Azubuike 25 points and eight rebounds.

Monta Ellis lead the Warriors with 27 points on 11-19 shooting and he did hit all five free throws as well. Which, since Ellis has come back his stroke from the free-throw line has dramatically improved, Ellis also chipped in with five assists, and three steals.

The bad news was the Warriors spark plug Corey Maggette off the bench had a miserable gam, which included picking up three fouls in the first half. He only scored six points, but lead the team with seven assists and chipped in four rebounds. He had way too many turnovers with five, which includes the two passes he threw to nobody that soared out of bounds.

Another piece of bad news for the Warriors was an injury to Anthony Randolph who apparently left in the first half with a slightly strained groin. He did not return to the game.

Stephen Jackson had a bad game offensively going 5-17 from the field and scoring only 10 points and he also went 0-5 from three. One of those was forced because of the shotclock not being reset on a floater by Ellis that hit the rim and Turiaf got the rebound, instead, of being reset to 14 seconds, the shotclock it was at five seconds and counting.

The good news though is Jackson did a great job at hounding Kobe Bryant and forcing him into tough shots. Bryant went 9-25 from the field and Jackson made some great defensive plays on him.

The one exception was with the Warriors trailing by seven, Jackson went to take a charge on Kobe, unfortunately, the refs didn't buy that it was a foul, and Kobe easily got to the rim. Turiaf then came over to help, but it was too late, and Kobe got a three-point play out of it. Although, an argument could be made that Kobe used his off hand to get Turiaf out of the way, hence the reason why Turiaf was grabbing his face after the play.

Overall after watching the game it wasn't a total disappointment. The Warriors came back after looking pathetic in the first part of the third quarter and made a game of it. The best news though is over the past two games against the Lakers that twice the Warriors have held Kobe to only one free throw.