“I don’t think we had a lot of silly turnovers tonight, and that’s important”, forward Draymond Green said.
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“The Warriors go on a 55-game winning streak and they’re only two games ahead of them”, said Miami’s Chris Bosh, slightly overstating Golden State’s winning streak.
The Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs warmed up for their massive Monday night meeting with comfortable victories on Friday. Golden State just kept pouring it on in the third quarter as Curry continued to shoot fantastic from the field. They continued to bother San Antonio limiting them to just 19 points in the quarter. Granted Tim Duncan didn’t play because of knee soreness, but still.
Well, Popovich was wrong in one respect.
The coaches’ picks for the NBA All-Star reserves get released Thursday. San Antonio moved Leonard on Curry and while he fared better than some of his teammates, Curry also did this to him. “Obviously, the score was in our favor, but we had to work for everything”. He had 37 points on Monday night.
Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins set a team record with 56 points – the most by an National Basketball Association player this season – but it was not enough to prevent the Kings losing 129-128 to Charlotte, as Troy Daniels hit the go-ahead 3-pointer with 9 seconds left.
The Warriors had 21 assists on 24 baskets in the first half, 31 on 44 in all.
“Some of that was their play”, Kerr said. “It was our defensive pressure that set that pace”.
The NBA MVP had 15 points in the opening quarter, 18 in the third and shot 12 for 20 in Golden State’s 39th straight home victory at raucous Oracle Arena, where a star-studded sellout crowd saw a lopsided showdown in what was billed as a potential Western Conference finals preview. San Antonio didn’t need Parker to shut down Curry but he needed to at least, contain him. They were the only two starters that finished in double figures. Green had 11 points, nine rebounds and six assists. Kawhi Leonard led the Spurs with 16 points in 25 minutes.
Tony Parker and other Spurs guards are unlikely to stop the deadeye shooter and it will be interesting to see if Popovich will assign Leonard the task of guarding Curry. The Warriors have the best offense in the league while the Spurs have the best defense in the league so this matchup should be extremely fun to watch.
There was, however, a measure of satisfaction over playing as well as they did and realizing that on this night there was nothing Spurs could do about it. They won in a 120-90 thrashing on Monday, treating the vaunted Spurs as if they were any other opposing team coming into Oracle Arena to face annihilation.
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“It was like men and boys out there tonight, I thought, as far as the toughness and aggressiveness was concerned in every facet of the game”, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. And I started to feel better finally, maybe 10 days ago…. Chicago lost its 45th game to slip to 41-4, so a win against the Spurs would pull the Warriors even with the Bulls of 20 years ago.
