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Tim Bontemps, ESPN
BOSTON — At Golden State media day back in September, superstar guard Stephen Curry gave a mild declaration of intent for this season when he said that his Warriors are “in a position where we can be a relevant team early and give ourselves a chance to compete.
“Then assess where we are.”
Wednesday night, just weeks after Curry uttered those remarks, he and the Warriors improved to 7-1 on the season, moving into a three-way tie with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Phoenix Suns for the best record in the Western Conference thanks to a thrilling 118-112 victory over the Boston Celtics at TD Garden.
But despite a victory over the defending champions — one that saw the Warriors end the night with the league’s third-best offense, second-best defense and best net rating (plus-15.5 points per 100 possessions) — Curry isn’t ready to give Golden State too much credit just yet.
“We haven’t done anything yet,” Curry, who finished with 27 points, 7 rebounds, 9 assists and 4 steals in 34 minutes, said with a wry smile while sitting in the visitors locker room about an hour after the game had ended. “A good team, or a relevant team, wins the games they are supposed to win, you steal a couple on the road against good teams, you protect your home court. We’ve done those things so far, but we got two more games on this road trip, two tough tests.
“So I like where we’re at, obviously. But [there’s a] long way to go.”
The Warriors have played only 10 percent of their season thus far, but the early returns are exceedingly encouraging. Golden State, which won its first title under Steve Kerr back in the 2014-15 season behind the “Strength In Numbers” mantra, has taken that approach to a new level this season, playing as many as 13 players on a given night. Wednesday, with Brandin Podziemski out with an illness, Golden State played 11 players — and all of them received at least 13 minutes of game action.
As a result, the Warriors had a constant rotation of fresh defenders to throw at the Celtics, which allowed them to wreak havoc on Boston’s offense throughout the game. While the Celtics hit their usual bushel of 3-pointers, winding up 19-for-54 from behind the arc, they committed 12 turnovers and generally looked out of sorts and out of sync offensively for large stretches of the game in ways they typically have not been not only this season but over the past couple — and especially outside of a 41-point explosion in the third quarter.
“They’re physical, so they force you to fight for your space,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “They have active hands, so I think in the first half, they got a ton of deflections. They were able to get some stuff there, but I thought we did a better job of handling the physicality in the second half and just have to put — again, we talk physicality, it’s just as much about defense as offense. So it took us a little while to get adjusted to that. Once we did, we executed really well. And then it just came down to a couple possessions at the end.”
In particular, it was a string of possessions that came after Gary Payton II dove on the floor and got a loose ball with 4:18 to go in the fourth quarter, giving Golden State the ball with Boston holding a 97-96 lead after Kerr called a quick timeout. Over the ensuing four minutes, Golden State outscored Boston 15-7, scoring on several consecutive possessions to put the game away — in part because of a pair of massive offensive rebounds by Warriors center Kevon Looney, including one on a badly missed airball corner 3 by Draymond Green.
It was reminiscent of Looney’s dominant performance on the offensive boards in the 2022 NBA Finals, when Golden State closed out Boston in six games to win the title, and underscored the way the Warriors won this game through their physicality and force at both ends of the court.
“The last five minutes, I thought our defense really showed up,” Kerr said. “The activity, Gary getting on the floor, Loon getting two putbacks, those were maybe the two biggest shots of the game. And then Steph finding Buddy [Hield] in the corner for that 3, I mean, it was all in sequence. It just felt like we connected the game, got stops and were able to get scores and close it out.”
And, as a result, a night that began with Kerr being booed after the so-called controversy surrounding his decision to not play Tatum in either game against Serbia for Team USA during the Americans’ run to winning a fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal this summer ended with the Warriors walking off the famed parquet floor victorious.
That the Warriors did so at the beginning of an early-season defining stretch of five games that began here Wednesday before going to Cleveland and taking on the undefeated Cavaliers on Friday, being in Oklahoma City on Sunday and then going back to San Francisco in Klay Thompson‘s return with the Dallas Mavericks before facing Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies only gives credence to their early-season play begin more than a flash in the pan.
But, while it remains to be seen how long they can continue to play in exactly this manner — particularly in playing so many players — Curry is enjoying what he’s seeing, and how the Warriors are doing it.
“Until proven otherwise, that’s how we have to play,” Curry said. “And we’ve talked about it. Coach has talked about it until he’s blue in the face already. Every practice, every film session, every pre-game, it’s the same message. So it is who we are right now, it’s who we have to be. You obviously know as the season goes on, rotations get smaller. … It happened tonight. The rotations get a little tight in the second half just because you’re trying to win and you’re trying to put the pieces together. But it’s a fun way to play, because again, every night is different and everybody has to stay engaged, and it’s working.”
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