WARRIOR MENTALITY
R.J. & Knicks beat Golden State on first game of West Coast trip
This wasn’t the dynastic Warriors. Klay Thompson is out for the season. Draymond Green was ejected in the second quarter.
But these Warriors still had Steph Curry. And the Knicks put a hurting on them in San Francisco, 119-104, suffocating Curry in the second half and extending their winning streak to three games.
RJ Barrett led the Knicks (8-8) with career-high 28 points, continuing to flaunt the improvements in his sophomore season. Julius Randle fell one assist short of a triple-double and Mitchell Robinson added 18 points at center, as the Knicks began their four-game road trip with another dominating defensive performance.
They led throughout and kept the door firmly shut on Golden State in the second half. It didn’t take long for Tom Thibodeau to impact New York.
“It’s a typical Thibs team,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “They’re defending. And keeping themselves in games night-in and night-out. They have some really good wins on the year. And then one night you’ll watch them and they don’t make any shots and you wonder, how the hell are they .500. And then you see them the next night and they beat a really good team because they’re defending like crazy.”
The Warriors (8-7) shot just 38 percent and were wrecked in the second half. Curry finished with 30 points but only 10 in the second half, with nearly all of that arriving in garbage time. He spent much of the fourth quarter on the bench with a towel on his head, looking dejected.
Curry, who missed all but five games last season with a hand injury, had shown signs of returning to his superstar form, averaging over 28 points before Thursday while connecting on over four treys per game. He had a 60-point game this season and now sits three 3-pointers behind Reggie Miller for second on the all-time list (but still well below No. 1 Ray Allen).
He was Golden State’s lone offensive weapon Friday, and it wasn’t enough.
Green managed just 17 minutes before his ejection in the second quarter for his second technical. It appeared Green was yelling at his teammate, but the referee heard a curse and booted the three-time All-Star. The Warriors didn’t have the firepower to compensate, leaning on their supporting cast of unaccomplished, the likes of Kelly Oubre (2-for-11, seven points).
Thursday represented the Knicks’ first game since the league began to crack down on hugging and handshakes amongst players, moving security to midcourt to police the COVID precautions. It’s a strange request for athletes accustomed to the routine of embrace, and perhaps more of a symbolic rule than practical considering the players are sweating all over each other for 48 minutes.
Randle believes in commissioner Adam Silver but is skeptical about enforcement.
“I don’t know how it’s really going to be enforced just cause naturally it’s just something we do, a part of what we do,” he said. “Everybody shows everybody love. So I don’t really know how they’re going to enforce it or not. We’ll do our best to be conscious of it. They’re looking out for the best interest of us and our safety, our family’s safety. So we’ll try to be as conscious of it as we can of it. But naturally, you might mess up.”
The Knicks have started their longest road trip of the season’s first half, an eight-day, four-game tour of the Western Conference. The longest stop is in San Francisco, where the Knicks spent three nights quarantining in a hotel. A pandemic gets lonelier on the road. But certainly winning helps.
“It sucks, being stuck in the room in the hotel. It’s really boring,” Randle said. “We watched so many shows. Room service gets old. But we’re blessed and very lucky that we get to play the game that we love on a nightto-night basis. I would say we’re fortunate.”