Stephen Curry hits demoralizing 3 on Lakers before halftime buzzer (Video)

With the Los Angeles Lakers already in a hole in their play-in game against the Golden State Warriors, Stephen Curry hit a buzzer-beating 3 before halftime.

It already wasn’t looking good for the Los Angeles Lakers during the first half of their play-in game against the Golden State Warriors Wednesday night. Trailing by 10 points on the final possession of the second quarter, the Lakers’ Big 3 of LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Dennis Schroder had gone a combined 4-for-28 from the field.

Even so, they were only down by 10 points. Stephen Curry hadn’t gone nuclear yet; the Warriors were simply beating them with defense and their role players stepping up. All the Lakers needed was to get a stop, recollect themselves at the break and come out with renewed focus to shift the momentum in the second half.

Wardell Curry had other plans:

Stephen Curry sends Lakers into halftime with demoralizing 3-pointer

There’s really not much else you can do in that situation. The Lakers had three guys draped all over Curry at various stages of that final play, but he simply kept dribbling past them until he found enough space to launch off a leaning triple over Alex Caruso. And of course it found the bottom of the net.

To that point in the first half, Curry had tallied 12 points, but he was only shooting 4-for-10 from the floor and 2-for-5 from 3 — not bad numbers, but certainly not befitting the NBA‘s leading scorer at 32.0 points per game.

Unfortunately for the Lakers (and much to the delight of Warriors and Phoenix Suns fans), Curry’s impossible make before the halftime buzzer gave him 15 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the floor and 3-of-6 shooting from deep, putting the Lakers in a 13-point hole and giving the Dubs plenty of momentum heading into the second half.

The winner of this game will secure the 7-seed and move on to face the 2-seeded Suns in the first round. The loser will face the Memphis Grizzlies in a do-or-die game for the 8-seed … and the right to take on the top-seeded Utah Jazz in the first round.

There’s still an entire second half to play, but if the Warriors blow this game wide open, don’t forget about this demoralizing triple that may have opened the floodgates.