Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson lead way in fourth quarter as Golden State beats Nets

It seems that every time the Nets have something positive going, a dark cloud comes in to steal it away.

When the start of a five-game road trip meant that Kyrie Irving would play for the longest consecutive stretch of the season, James Harden was unable to take the court Saturday night because of a hand injury.

And when Irving proceeded to have his best game of the season, a questionable foul — and Steve Nash’s decision to not challenge it — hurt the Nets' cause as they fell to Golden State, 110-106,at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

It was the fourth straight loss for the Nets (29-19), who dropped to sixth place in the Eastern Conference, 2 1/2 games behind the first-place Heat.

The key sequence of the game began when Klay Thompson hit a three-pointer over Irving and Patty Mills to give Golden State a 107-103 lead with 12.1 seconds left. Irving responded with a three-pointer with nine seconds remaining, but he fouled Thompson before a sideline inbounds pass could be made, and Stephen Curry sank the ensuing free throw. After Golden State inbounded again, Thompson hit two more free throws with 5.7 seconds left for a four-point lead.

Nash said "I'll get someone in trouble if I say why" he didn't challenge the foul call against Irving in the final seconds. "A little bird said don't challenge it."

Nash added that the officials told him it was "100% foul" and he didn’t want to burn his last timeout.

"It was just inadvertent contact," Irving said of the foul. "But from looking at the top of the screen, I saw that my foot was in Klay’s way and he tripped, and that’s going to be a foul any day of the week, any game. Sorry."

He added, "I wasn’t in the right guarding position. It could have gone either way. At the end of games, you kind of expect an aggressive style of play and I thought I was in a legal guard position, but the refs disagreed, so it could have gone either way. It was a big play, for sure."

Irving had a season-high 32 points along with seven rebounds and seven assists and Mills added 24 points for the Nets. James Johnson had 14.

Thompson and Curry scored Golden State’s final 17 points. They entered the fourth quarter having totaled 4-for-23 shooting, including 2-for-14 from three-point range, but Curry scored 14 of his 19 points and Thompson added nine of his 16 in the period. Between them, they shot 6-for-9 overall and 3-for-4 from outside the arc in the quarter.

"They went to those guys that are very familiar in those type of moments, Steph and Klay," Irving said. "They had the ball in their hands, and you just see down the stretch those 50/50 basketballs we weren't coming up with. I don't know how many offensive rebounds they had in the end of the game or the last five minutes, but they made the difference in tonight's game. Though our effort was there, just paying attention to the little details that make the difference in winning by two or losing by four."

Andrew Wiggins scored 24 points, Jordan Poole had 17, Otto Porter Jr. scored 16 and Kevon Looney had 15 rebounds for Golden State (37-13). Curry added eight assists.

Irving had 14 points in the third quarter. He scored 12 in a 28-6 run that turned a 72-53 deficit into an 81-78 lead.

"I’m proud of the guys," Nash said. "They fought, stuck with it. That’s a difficult team to defend that does things differently than most of the rest of the league. We did very well in stretches and we were poor in stretches but we didn’t fracture."

With Kevin Durant already out with an MCL injury, the Nets learned Saturday that they would be without Harden, who has a right hand strain and is day-to-day. Harden has had discomfort in the hand for days, Nash said, but it became irritated Saturday morning after lifting and shooting on Friday. An MRI of the hand was relatively clean but did show inflammation.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.