Archbishop Mitty icon Aaron Gordon turns back the clock against hometown Warriors

SAN FRANCISCO – A driving bass. Familiar tunes. A place he called home.

Sitting in at his locker, located about 50 miles north of the storied high school where he became a Bay Area legend, Aaron Gordon felt at home in spirit, body and sound on Thursday night at Chase Center.

“The DJ was playing slaps,” Gordon said. “So I’m vibing the whole game. He’s playing just the straight Bay that I grew up with. Just like Hyphy music. So I was just out getting Hyphy.”

Almost 15 years after a scrawny, impossibly bouncy Gordon burst into the public consciousness as the nation’s most terrifying high school dunker at Archbishop Mitty, he dominated the hometown team to the tune of a career-high 50 points.

Despite going shot-for-shot with Steph Curry, it was not enough to will the Nuggets to a victory. Golden State pulled away in overtime, 137-131.

“I feel awful for Aaron,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said. “Aaron had night where you know I’ll never forget, I know he won’t.”

The majority of his points came on 17 of 21 shooting, a figure reminiscent of his time as a preps superstar.

Archbishop Mitty’s Aaron Gordon (32) goes up for a basket against Modesto Christian TJ Wallace (1) in the second quarter of the NorCal Boys Open Division semifinal basketball game at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, March 12, 2013. (Josie Lepe/Staff)

Back when Gordon was the San Jose Mercury News boys high school basketball player of the decade.

Back when he terrorized Bellarmine, St..Francis and the rest of the venerable West Catholic Athletic League en-route to three consecutive league titles as a Central Coast Section power and a section-record 2,386 career points.

“I think he’s the best player ever from the CCS,” Mark Tennis, longtime editor of Cal-Hi Sports, said shortly after the Gordon era at Mitty ended.

Back when he led the Monarchs to two consecutive California Interscholastic Federation D-II crowns as an unstoppable interior scorer.

Archbishop Mitty’s Aaron Gordon (32) won a NBA title for the Denver Nuggets (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Staff)

But these days, aside from one two-handed jam in the second half, the former Dunk Contest champ put up his numbers in a far more refined manner.

He scored 25 points in the first half, and 25 in the second and overtime. It was a performance that tied him for the 10th-most points ever scored against the venerable franchise. And he did it on mostly jump shots, making 10 3-pointers, including his first seven in a row.

It is a jumper he has worked tirelessly on, a far cry from the awkward slingshot motion that Warriors forward Draymond Green saw when the two first worked out in Oakland over a decade ago.

“They weren’t just like spot up threes either,” Green said. “He had a couple of them off the dribble, a couple of them like people pinning in for him. They were all different threes and he was knocking them down.“

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Anyone who watched Gordon last postseason would not have been surprised by his accurate shot. He hit two game-winners in last season’s playoffs as a leader on the Nuggets.

“To have his coach call him ‘the soul of the team’ is one of the most impressive parts of who Aaron is,” his high school coach Tim Kennedy told this news organization in the spring. “I couldn’t be more happy or proud of him.”

Gordon was an integral part of Denver’s 2023 championship team, a versatile forward who could defend any position while playing a swiss army knife role on offense.

Thursday night was not Gordon’s first big game against the Warriors, either. Last season, he scored 38 in a March matchup with Golden State.

On Thursday, Golden State found a way to leave the hometown hero bitterly disappointed.

They’re asking if I wanted the game ball, and no, I don’t want the game ball, take an L home with me,” Gordon told The Athletic. “No thank you. So this sucks.”

Gordon might have been disappointed, but the San Jose native still left his opponents in awe.

“Aaron Gordon had an unbelievable night shooting the ball,” said none other than Steph Curry.

Mitty’s Aaron Gordon dunks in the first quarter during the CCS Open Division boys basketball finals at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif. on Saturday, March 2, 2013. The Archbishop Mitty Monarchs played the Serra Padres. (Jim Gensheimer/Staff)