Golden State’s record 24-game winning streak to start the season came to an end on Saturday in a 108-95 loss to the Bucks in Milwaukee, with interim coach Luke Walton saying the Warriors “ran of gas”. Defensively, he wasn’t quite able to anticipate and mirror the guy he was guarding like he normally does.
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The fatigue showed up across the roster in other ways as well.
Watch Doug Russell and Jay Sorgi discuss the Bucks, Marquette and Wisconsin – and Jay follow through on a bet he made about the Bucks beating Golden State – in our video player. They were a playoff team with a young and exciting core to go along with a coaching staff that crafted the second-best defense in the league. The current record is 286 – a record that was set by Curry himself past year. Smith said last month that he wanted to face Golden State in the NBA Finals again, and that looks like a likely scenario.
Even without the Warriors’ unbeaten streak concluding on Saturday night, the matchup between the two current Conference leaders in Oakland will certainly force some rescheduling of Christmas dinners in many households due to its 5 p.m. ET start. Warriors have been the only team that had gone undefeated thus far in the season.
Every victory raised the stakes for the Golden State Warriors. Here, Draymond Green makes the right read to the open shooter but Brandon Rush has to move it because of Middleton’s length on his recovery.
Hopefully this is the win that inspires the Bucks to play better.
However, they have another challenge ahead of them – four West Coast games, a gauntlet they have rarely succeeded in.
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The loss to the Bucks was one night removed from a tiring and thrilling double-overtime gauntlet at the Boston Celtics, the Warriors felt their first sting of regular-season defeat since April. My gut tells me that people were plenty ready to see the Miami Heat’s 27-game winning streak in 2013 end much quicker than this one. Warriors had won 28-game in a row.
