Wednesday night’s 149-106 dismantling of the Lakers was a game of familiarities for the Warriors, with a few slight tweaks.
But this wasn’t the hopeless Lakers teams of the past few years. This was the new and improved Walton Lakers, that have started off a surprising 8-7 on the year and just beat Oklahoma City last night at the buzzer.
They looked like a team on the back-end of a back-to-back, without two starters tonight.
At least they also pass the ball though, now that their offenses first three options aren’t Kobe Bryant. Except they didn’t do that either, as they managed just nine first half assists, or one less than Draymond Green.
Durant said that playing in a game like is so fun because of how much the ball moves:
“It’s pretty crazy, we almost had more assists than rebounds. That’s sick. It shows that everyone is touching the ball and moving it.”
It was too easy for the Warriors all night. Their big three alone would have been enough as Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant shot a combined 31-47, that’s 66 percent, and racked up 85 points.
Thompson himself scored 26, which extended his streak of 25 or more points to four straight games. Curry went off for 31 points, nine assists and just one turnover in 29 minutes and had his choice of any open look he wanted.
Thompson said he was really pulling for the reserves to hit that 150 point mark:
“I don’t think a team I’ve been on has ever scored 150 points, so I thought that would have been pretty cool. But I can settle for 149. It was a pretty amazing night we had on the offensive end.”
This was exactly what you would expect when a bottom four team in defensive efficiency, without D’Angelo Russell (knee) or Julius Randle (hip) faced off against the team that leads the league in offensive efficiency.
It was such an offensive clinic that the Warriors made 53 shots and 47 of them were assisted on, which set a franchise record.
Steve Kerr said this game and the assists certainly surpassed his standards:
“That’s a pretty incredible number. For me I always look at three categories: assists, turnovers for us and the opposing team’s shooting percentage. Those are the things I look at immediately on a box score. It was fantastic, we are just making the simple play.”
But it wasn’t just the stars who stood out, Ian Clark scored 21, which was his second game in a row hitting double figures, and JaVale McGee had eight points in seven minutes, half of them coming on alley-oops.
About the only thing that went wrong all night was the Warriors shooting 69 percent from the free throw line.
It was so bad at the end of the first half the Warriors were shooting 55 percent on 3-pointers and 55 percent on free throws—on the exact same amount of attempts.
You could tell there was a little something extra about this game as the team was still salty about getting embarrassed by this Lakers squad earlier this month in LA. Which itself was all to familiar as the same thing happened last season.
And the Warriors are hoping for a slight tweak of that when they visit the Lakers again very soon.
The Warriors get Thanksgiving Day off before taking a short trip down south and take on the Lakers again in a rematch Friday. They then travel back to Oracle for a game the next day against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Warriors extended their streak to nine straight games with at least 30 assists, which sets a franchise record; they have averaged 34.1 assists per game during this streak. … The Warriors continue to rack up the blocked shots, blocking five tonight, they entered the game fourth in the NBA in blocks per game averaging 6.14, despite their perceived weakest area being rim protection. … Kevin Durant picked up his third technical of the season, which in an upset alert gives him the team lead over Draymond Green.
Last modified November 25, 2016 10:47 pm
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