The Warriors Let Luka Cook, Then Took the Game Away

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2026 — CHASE CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO

The Chase Center crowd started chanting “Luka sucks!” inside the first minute — and for one quarter, Luka Dončić made it the worst idea in the building. He scored 21 points in the first quarter, more than the entire Golden State Warriors team, and the Los Angeles Lakers’ lead reached 25 early in the second. Then Golden State handed the quarter back: a 38–15 second quarter of its own, a tie at halftime that had never happened in the shot-clock era, and a second half it owned outright — a 112–95 win on the opening night of NBA Cup group play, in a game that flipped twice and still was not close at the end.

Dončić finished with a game-high 37 — but the line bends: 21 in the first quarter, then three in the second and two in the fourth. Stephen Curry scored 31 with eight 3-pointers, and on the fourth-quarter run that ended the game he passed Dominique Wilkins for 18th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. The duel at the top of this page is the night in miniature: one star owned the start, the other owned everything after it.

Luka Doncic in the Stats Hub →

Twenty-one in the first

This was round two. In the season opener on Oct. 21, Dončić and Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg jawed at each other all night, and Lendeborg said afterward he had “lost all respect” for the Lakers star, per the New York Post. On Friday, Lendeborg went straight at him from the first possession, NBC Sports Bay Area reported — and Dončić’s answer was a 3-pointer over him a minute later and an avalanche behind it. Golden State scored the game’s first basket; the Lakers then scored 14 straight, and Dončić closed the quarter with 21 points on five 3-pointers and five assists. Per the Post, it was his 33rd career 20-point quarter and his 10th as a Laker — joining Kobe Bryant as the only Lakers with 10 or more since 2000, and passing James Harden for the third-most in the league in that span.

Lendeborg’s first quarter was the mismatch in one line: no points, three turnovers, two fouls, per NBC Sports Bay Area. Dončić, meanwhile, was performing for the crowd that had booed him — after one first-half 3-pointer he turned and shouted back at the stands, the Post reported. When Austin Reaves’ free throws made it 40–15 with 11:40 left in the second quarter, the Lakers led by 25 and the game looked like a rerun of the opener, which Los Angeles won by 22.

The mirror quarter

It turned the moment Dončić sat. Golden State opened the second quarter on an 18–4 run with him on the bench, Yardbarker reported, the spine of it a 13–0 burst, and the chasers were reserves: De’Anthony Melton scored 13 points in the quarter, including a personal 7–0 run, per NBC Sports Bay Area. By halftime the bench scoring read 30–3 for the Warriors; it finished 50–7. Dončić scored three points in the quarter. With 6.4 seconds left in the half, Brandin Podziemski hit a 27-foot 3-pointer off a Curry assist to tie it 53–53 — and per USA TODAY, Golden State became the first team in the shot-clock era, since 1954-55, to trail by at least 23 points after the first quarter and tie the game by halftime.

Curry takes the ending

Los Angeles landed one more punch: the Lakers rebuilt their lead to nine in the third quarter, and the highlight of the night landed inside the fight — Curry, switched onto Dončić, put him on the floor with a series of dribble moves and drained the 3-pointer in front of him, USA TODAY and NBC Sports Bay Area reported; Dončić answered with a contested 3 of his own at the other end. But the Lakers’ last lead was 80–79, inside the final minute of the third. Podziemski’s corner 3 with 51 seconds left put Golden State ahead for good — its first lead since 2–0 — and the Warriors then ripped off an 18–0 run across the break, noted live by the NBA’s own Cup coverage, that made it 96–80 and ended the argument.

Inside that run, Curry scored the 26,669th point of his career and passed Dominique Wilkins for 18th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, per Bleacher Report — Oscar Robertson, at No. 17, is next. The fourth quarter was a formality: 27–15, the last of the Lakers’ 22 turnovers (Austin Reaves had eight), and Lendeborg fouling out with six points, five turnovers and a minus-20, per NBC Sports Bay Area. Walker Kessler’s 10 points, 13 rebounds and five blocks were the Lakers’ footnote. Golden State, 3–3, has won three straight; the Lakers fall to 4–2 — and in West Group C, where point differential is the tiebreaker that matters, the Warriors banked +17 while the Lakers took −17 home.

The Sports Desk’s read: the headline is the game. Golden State let Dončić have the loudest first quarter of the young season, then took everything else — the ball, the bench minutes, the second quarter, the ending and the milestone — and left him the emptiest 37 points of the night. A Cup group is a differential race as much as a win race. The Warriors didn’t just erase 25 points; they made the erasure count double.

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