Golden State improved their NBA-record season start to 22-0 by beating Brooklyn 114-98 on Sunday, with a generally subdued Stephen Curry still proving decisive for the Warriors, scoring 16 of his 28 points in the third quarter.
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The Nets pushed the Warriors to overtime in November before Golden State ran away with 10 unanswered points in the extra period for a 107-99 win.
But whatever other elements of the Warriors’ game you want to praise, the win ultimately came down to another unconscious burst of shooting from Stephen Curry.
The undefeated Golden State Warriors survived a late scare before stretching their winning streak to 25 consecutive games with a 112-109 victory against the Toronto Raptors Saturday.
“Plus, he has a great team”, Nets coach Lionel Hollins said.
Cleveland have lost three straight contests. Then came an alley-oop to Festus Ezeli, and an old-fashioned three-point play he completed as fans chanted, “MVP!”
Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images Draymond Green has 22 points, nine rebounds and seven assists against the Nets.
After reaching 21-0 with their win over the Toronto Raptors on Saturday night, the NBA’s defending champions also achieved the distinction of the best start to a season by any North American professional sports team ever.
“We might not play our best game, but we find a way to win”. After watching an 11-1 run by Toronto to take the lead, Luke Walton didn’t hesitate to deploy the Warriors’ signature small-ball line-up.
Curry admits that when he’s been on the bench at the end of games, sometimes he’ll turn to Walton or his teammates and just talk about how remarkable this run has been. “Twenty-one different challenges and we’ve been able to separate each one individually and figure out different ways of winning”.
The lead was down to one when Scola made two free throws with 6.2 seconds left to finish with 10 points.
Even though Golden State did not reach basket as much as they usually do, their defense stepped up and made all the difference in the game. “I thought our effort was there, but again, consistency…to beat a great team like that there can’t be any “oh crap” moments, and we had a couple of those”. They’re increasingly dependent on Curry’s heroics – of which there is no shortage – rather than a balanced team attack. “We have to learn from it”.
“It’s a show”, Golden State reserve forward Marreese Speights said of Curry’s performances. Other Warriors players also stepped up big time, including Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. GS’ all-world guard poured in 44 points, including 9 of 15 from beyond the arc.
“We were down three at the time or something like that, so we just needed a little life”, Curry said.
Shedding Deron Williams was expected to have something of a positive effect, and while Williams is hardly putting up a stellar year in Dallas, he did have the talent both to have big games at times, and providing court spacing that just has not been there for Brooklyn. He entered Sunday leading the league by averaging 32.6 points per game. As Steve Nash put it, Curry is the most skilled player in history. The Warriors, who know their way around close games (that’s how they won last year’s National Basketball Association title), took advantage of yet another crummy Raptors first quarter.
Cavs-Heat: Without LeBron James to contend with, the Heat didn’t have a whole lot of trouble with the Cavaliers in Miami last night.
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The Raptors host Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday.
