Conditionally send responses in an Express app

I'm curious whether you can write if statements in an Express app to conditionally execute your code without providing else statements.

if(pred) {
  doSomething()
}
return foo;
calcBar(); // doesn't run.

Above is the synchronous code that stops execution after the return statement.

My Express function looks like this:

app.get('/matches', async function(req, res) {
  try {
    const data = await someGraphQLCall();
    if(data.length === 0) {
      res.json({ message: "No data." });
    }
    const someOtherData = await someOtherGraphQLCall(data.foo);
    res.json({ someOtherData });
  } catch (err) {
    res.json({err})
  }
}

I know because of this question that code after the first res.json might still be executed. Is there a way to stop that? I don't want the second GraphQL call to execute if the first if condition is met. Is that possible without using else ?

Edit:

As the question I linked above mentioned, using a return statement is a bad option because:

it also makes it less meaningful and vague, cause it uses incorrect semantics. If you are not using the value from the function, then you shouldn't return one.

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