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Takeaways after Warriors roll over Thunder (again), Curry leads way to new franchise record

By

Jacob Hutchinson

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© Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports

Well, that was easy… for once. This has not been a season defined by the Warriors dominating their opponents. Not by any stretch. They lost by 53 to Toronto and 30 to Dallas. But they’ve also beaten that Dallas team and Cleveland both by 31, and have now beat the Thunder by a cumulative 98 points over three games, that same with Saturday night’s 136-97 contests.

It’s been a very weird season, but the Warriors just picked up the rare, straightforward, back-to-back wins.

The Stephen Curry experience leads Warriors to franchise record

At a certain point you’d think there would be a limit to what you could say about this guy. But for as absurd as he is — and he’s damn near always absurd — he manages to invent new avenues of absurdity to pursue in almost every game.

Maybe he just wanted to get to take the fourth quarter off. Whatever the reason, Curry torched the Thunder to the tune of 49 points in 29 minutes. This came after the Wizards’ Bradley Beal, who Curry is battling for the scoring title, scored 50.

Had he wanted to, there’s little question he could have tied or broken Klay Thompson’s game-record 14 threes. He went 14-of-26 and 11-of-21 from three, with one of those misses a three-quarter court shot to end the third quarter.

Here’s a fun stat. Curry has 22 career games with 10-plus threes. Thompson is second… with five. That performance got the Warriors close to a franchise record for threes in a game, and the bench did the rest. With threes by Nico Mannion, Mychal Mulder and Alen Smailagic in the late fourth quarter, Golden State set a new record with 27 threes in a game, surpassing the prior record of 24.

I’m not going to try and describe Curry’s absurdity any further. It’s better to watch it:

Green and Looney help lead the charge early

What’s funny about Curry’s performance is that it almost got us to forget about a nearly perfect night from Draymond Green.

Green, with his turtle-like, wearing-a-backpack shooting stroke, started out 3-for-3 from three, and finished with 15 points, 13 assists, 5 rebounds and a pair of steals. For as dominant as Curry was, it was Green’s early shooting and passing dominance that sparked the inferno that became a franchise record night from three.

And as for Looney, the Warriors are undefeated this season when he collects 10 or more rebounds. He did so in the first half of this contest and had 12 on the night.

Peaking at the right time?

It’s tough to tell what to make of beatdowns against a team in the Thunder… which has lost 20 of its last 21 games. They are tanking and horrendous right now, and that’s not an overstatement

But you should be bludgeoning the Thunder on back-to-back games, and the Warriors did that. While it is a team that’s almost all project players, there’s often a weirdness with back to backs that the Warriors completely ignored this weekend.

Their final four games are not easy, but they are at home, against the Jazz, Suns, Pelicans and Grizzlies.

It remains to be seen whether this actually constitutes momentum, but it’s never a bad thing to get your starters fourth quarter rest before a difficult stretch, and to set a new franchise record. Golden State, now at 35-33, also reclaimed sole possession of the eighth seed, which is looking more and more like it might mean a play-in game against the Los Angeles Lakers.

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