Warriors’ record? Just taking care of business
DENVER — If you walked into the Warriors’ locker room Sunday night a few minutes after their 118-105 win over the Nuggets, it would have looked like just another night at the office. Players grazed the buffet table, strapped ice bags around knees, talked quietly.
No clue that the Warriors had just made more history, winning their 15th straight game, tying the NBA record for best start to a season (the 1948-49 Washington Capitols and ’93-94 Houston Rockets also started 15-0).
“Just another win, man, another win,” guard Shaun Livingston said. “We brought (the 15-0) up (in the postgame team meeting), we acknowledged it, it’s there and now we’re going to move on.”
Next stop, if a runaway freight train has stops, is at home Tuesday night against the 2-11 Lakers. As the Warriors close in on the record, they remain a coach’s — and a fan’s — dream, in attitude and execution.
Stephen Curry, when asked
if the team’s confidence is growing, said, “Yeah, because you find different ways to win. I think every game, the chemistry gets better, the flow of the game gets better. We’re not blowing everybody out every night (note: yes they are, by an average of 14.4 points per game), but we find different ways to win, and that’s what’s special about our team.
“Our confidence is definitely at an all-time high.”
So is their popularity. Before the game, Nuggets coach Michael Malone said that playing the Warriors now is like being the Washington Generals, the stooge team that lost a million games to the Harlem Globetrotters.
“Some people are saying, ‘Hey, it’s great you’re on national TV,’ ” Malone said. “... Nobody’s here to see us.”
Fans in rival cities
The Warriors are the Show, in the NBA and in sports. Three hours before Sunday’s game, two kids’ teams played on the Pepsi Arena court. When they finished, I asked the fifth-graders on one team, 303 Elite, who the best shooter in basketball is.
Like nine baby birds in a nest, they threw their arms up and chirped in unison, with zero hesitation, “Steph Curry!”
It’s the Curry show, but it’s so much more. Curry was held — partly by his own substandard shooting — to 19 points Sunday. But he had seven assists and three steals, and enough highlights to thrill the kids.
On one play, Denver forward Danilo Gallinari, a superb 6-foot-10 athlete, applied hard defensive pressure in the corner of the court. The 6-3 Curry double-cross-dribbled Gallinari back and forth, then drained a fall-away three-pointer. Gallinari will be getting a sympathy card from the Clippers’ Chris Paul, a favorite victim of Curry’s moves.
Curry’s competitive fire (see Ron Kroichick’s Sunday Chronicle story on that subject) fuels the engine. During one timeout, Nuggets mascot Rocky the mountain lion climbed a 40-foot-tall freestanding ladder and tried to bounce balls off the floor and into the hoop. Curry stood on the sidelines, transfixed, the thought bubble over his head saying, “Let me up there.”
“I don’t think (general manager) Bob Myers would let me try that,” Curry said later.
Team-wide confidence
But Curry isn’t the only blast furnace of competitive fire. This is a team deal. Every game of the streak has had a distinctive personality, but certain tendencies emerge, and in each game there is a growing inevitability that the Warriors will do whatever it takes to win. The players feel it.
“I think it’s kind of a quiet confidence,” Curry said. “We don’t feel like we’re going to lose any time soon, the way we’re playing. We can get even better.”
The Warriors had defensive lapses early Sunday, but they regrouped and wound up playing Warriors’ style ball. They made 15 of 29 three-point attempts, to the Nuggets’ 4 for 15, and had 35 assists on 47 field goals — the kind of numbers previously seen only in video games.
They are playing Steve Kerr ball, even without Steve Kerr. Their coach has missed every game, and most practices, with headaches caused by a spinal-fluid leak. Nobody knows when he’ll be back, but he’s with ’em.
Curry said he can practically hear Kerr barking at him when he makes a lazy pass or takes a bad shot. The team’s style of ever-flow offense and ever-help defense is Kerrball, a style interim coach Luke Walton maintains.
Challenging history
Walton talks with Kerr regularly, on strategy and psychology. This still is very much Kerr’s team, so it’s fitting that he gets official credit for all the wins (and any losses).
The Warriors know they’re a long way from the big prize, a second straight NBA title. Possibly in the distance are the 1971-’72 Lakers, who won 33 regular-season games in a row, and the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls, who went 72-10 in 1995-’96.
But numbers are secondary.
“I just want the guys to enjoy the game, and play it the right way for one another,” Andre Iguodala said. “When that happens, success is like nothing else, so you try to enjoy it.”
Then Iguodala stuffed that 15th win in his gym bags and headed out with his teammates to catch a plane home.