Stephen Curry scored 16 of his 28 points in the third quarter and Golden State ran its NBA-record start to 22-0 by defeating host Brooklyn on Sunday night.
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In their first meeting in Golden State on November 14, the Nets almost halted the Warriors’ winning streak at 10 games.
Curry calmly drilled a pair of threes – he’d had confidently turned and headed back upcourt before the ball fell through the net on each – to put Golden State up by two points with 2:33 left to play.
Then Steph Curry, what else but the 3. Golden State led 87-80 before pouring it on in the fourth. The NBA MVP is averaging 30 points for his six career games at Toronto, where his father, Dell, played for his final three seasons.
“That’s what great players do”, Nets coach Lionel Hollins said. “He doesn’t have to go out there and do it all the time”. Walton and the players all called it a circus-like atmosphere but they seem to enjoy the attention.
On paper, it looks merely incredible: 14-for-24 from the field, 9-of-15 from three-point range, 7-for-9 from the free-throw line – just his eighth and nine misses from the stripe all season – 44 points, seven assists, two rebounds, three turnovers, and an uncredited game-winning defensive play, forcing Cory Joseph into a late turnover. The Warriors’ win over the Raptors on Saturday night allowed them to surpass the 1884 St. Louis Maroons baseball team, of the Union Association, for best start to a season.
It was enough to allow the Warriors to match the 1969-70 Knicks for the longest season-opening road win streak, with 12, while also keeping alive their other streaks – 22 in a row this season, 26 in a row overall – for at least two more days.
“I am sure that we pointed that out to our guys in the film session, that this team definitely believes they can beat us”, Warriors interim coach Luke Walton said.
This one was a challenge.
Eric Bledsoe was the Suns’ top-scorer with 23 points. But it blew a three-point lead in the final 10 seconds of regulation, and Brook Lopez missed a would-be game-winner from 2 feet at the buzzer.
Golden State just racked up its 22nd win this season, charging through the fatigue gauntlet in Brooklyn en route to a 114-98 win over the Nets. “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”.
“That Toronto team is very talented and they were playing at a high level today”. “We have to learn from it”.
Third quarter, Raps getting help from their bench, Lowry to Bebe Nogueira for the dunk.
They trailed just 83-79 with a quarter left to play, and scraped out a one-point lead with just under five minutes to go on a spectacular sequence that saw a Lowry three-pointer, a DeRozan layup, and a Lowry layup. Klay Thompson added 21 points. Curry put up 44 points and dished out seven assists. “It’s not like we went to Steph and told him to shoot more threes, he’s just gotten better and he’s choosing to do that”. Soccer star Didier Drogba, Olympic gold medallist Donovan Bailey, and National Basketball Association legends Bob Lanier and Isiah Thomas, among others sat courtside, there as part of “Giants of Africa”, Raptors GM Masai Ujiri’s second annual celebration of Nelson Mandela.
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The Warriors have a plus-15.4 point differential, and there have not been many close games.
