Four days after posting a “statement” win against the defending champion Celtics in Boston, the Warriors completed a feat even more significant:
A “statement” road trip.
Which happens to be sprinkled with fortuitous timing.
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Their 127-116 win over the Thunder on Sunday in Oklahoma City concluded a fabulous 10 days that signaled to the NBA that the Warriors are cold-eyed serious about flying high. They don’t care to merely challenge the league’s elite. They’re aiming to join it.
They left the Bay Area on Nov. 1 for their most imposing early-season trip, facing the solid Houston Rockets and the lowly Washington Wizards before staring three legitimate title contenders in the defending champion Celtics, the unbeaten Cleveland Cavaliers and the 8-1 Thunder.
Winning three of five would have been a good trip. Winning all five would have been enough for the Warriors to float home without boarding a jet. Their 4-1 mark, even with an ugly loss to the Cavaliers, is validation.
“Hell of a trip,” coach Steve Kerr told reporters at Paycom Center. “Great way to start the season out, winning eight of our first 10, including a couple road wins against two of the best teams in the league. I feel like our team is in a good place.
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“But this is just the beginning of a long season. We’ve got to keep working.”
The Warriors realize they are nowhere near perfect, with one blemish being a befuddling tendency to trick off big leads. It resurfaced again when a 30-point lead in the final seconds of the third quarter dwindled to six with 4:46 remaining.
Stephen Curry assured victory and rocked the Thunder to sleep by blasting them with eight of his game-high 36 points inside the final 3:23, including a dagger 3-ball that put the lead at 10 with 1:13 remaining.
“Those two nights are good for us to look at what we’re doing wrong to give up leads,” Kerr said. “On the other hand, it’s the modern NBA. No lead is safe. ... It just feels like this is the modern NBA.
“But we did have turnovers in both games that that allowed both Houston and OKC to get back in the game, and that's probably where we can clean some things up.”
The Warriors did enough to move into a virtual tie with OKC and the Phoenix Suns – all with 8-2 records – for first place in the Western Conference. The Warriors were in second place when they left town 10 days ago, but they hadn’t been tested. Now, tested, they come home with a record not topped by any team in the conference.
A glance around the West suggests this is as good a time as any for Golden State to stake their claim and keep climbing, as injuries are ravaging much of the conference.
In beating OKC, the Warriors took full advantage of the Thunder losing center Chet Holmgren to a hip injury in the first quarter. He was assisted off the floor, and Oklahoma announced after the game that Holmgren sustained a right iliac wing fracture and will be re-evaluated in eight to 10 weeks.
The Suns are saying star forward Kevin Durant (calf strain) will be out until at least Thanksgiving week. The fourth-place Denver Nuggets will be without power forward Aaron Gordon for at least two more weeks with a right calf strain. The fifth-place Memphis Grizzlies have three starters – Ja Morant, Desmond Bane and Marcus Smart – out on week-to-week status.
These wounded teams eventually will get their stars back. But the Warriors have to know it’s “go time.” Few things in the NBA are more glorious for a team’s psyche than stamping a successful road trip despite seeing there is a lot of room for improvement.
“You always have to have perspective in this league because it’s so hard to win,” Curry said on NBC Sports Bay Area’s "Warriors Postgame Live." “If you get on the plane at SFO 10 or 11 days ago and say we go 4-1, you take that all day. The Cleveland game was a tough pill to swallow.
“But our resiliency to bounce back and play against a very tough OKC team in their building and get a win like this on the way home, it shows what we’re building.”
Steph reflects on the Warriors ending a 4-1 road trip with a win tonight in OKC 👏 pic.twitter.com/UXQAY5Yk6K
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) November 11, 2024
Next up are Klay Thompson and the Dallas Mavericks, who are in 11th place. They’re wounded, too, without starting forward P.J. Washington and key rotation player Dereck Lively while losing at Denver on Sunday.
Good health is always temporary. Can change in an instant. The Warriors come home in a good place, mentally physically, and must use it to their advantage.