Stephen Curry sends young fan into joy overload before Warriors beat Nets, hit 22-0
This holiday season, the gift at the top of every basketball-loving kid’s list is Stephen Curry’s autograph.
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steph makes a kid’s dream come true pic.twitter.com/EARYifz0rV
— alex (@steven_lebron) December 6, 2015
And, y’know, who can blame this young fan for exploding with delight at coming away from the reigning MVP’s shooting session before Sunday’s meeting with the Brooklyn Nets with a hastily scrawled souvenir? We’re going to remember this run that he and his Golden State Warriors are putting together for a long, long time; knowing you’ve got a memento you’ll be able to look back on later seems like something that’s very much worth geeking out about.
The same, of course, can be said for the Dubs, who took a record-setting 21-game season-opening winning streak into Barclays Center on Sunday and left — surprise, surprise — with a record-setting 22-game season-opening winning streak.
As has become customary, Curry hit the gas in the third quarter, scoring 16 of his game-high 28 points in the frame to lead the Dubs to a 114-98 win over the Nets that improved Golden State to a perfect 22-0 on the season and extended its regular-season unbeaten stretch to 26 — the third-longest regular-season run of all time, one victory shy of the 2012-13 Miami Heat’s 27-game streak, and seven wins short of the all-time mark of 33 set by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers.
They’ve won 12 straight on the road to open the season, giving them a tie for the sixth-longest road streak ever, and equaling the 1969-70 New York Knicks for the best road start to a campaign. They can tie Miami and topple New York on Tuesday night, when they visit Bankers Life Fieldhouse to take on an Indiana Pacers club led by resurgent superstar Paul George.
Brooklyn led by five, its biggest lead of the game, with just over three minutes remaining in the third, thanks in large part to the efforts of power forward Thaddeus Young and reserve point guard Shane Larkin. And then, in a flash, they were gone, with Curry scoring 11 points and lofting a lob for a Festus Ezeli flush in a 17-5 spurt over the final 3:04 of the quarter, a blitz that everyone in Barclays expected but that Brooklyn could not battle back as the Warriors headed into the fourth up seven.
“Our guys don’t want this first loss,” interim bench boss and reigning Western Conference Coach of the Month Luke Walton said after the game, according to Alex Wong of Sports on Earth, who also captured the fan interaction depicted above. “So we constantly keep bringing it. The bigger the stage gets, the better our guys play.”
A big early-fourth run keyed by reserves Leandro Barbosa and Marreese Speights put the contest out of reach, sending Golden State to its 10th win by at least 15 points this season, just one more absurd number in a season full of them as the Warriors continue to defy the conventional wisdom about what should be possible in today’s NBA. From ESPN.com’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss:
That’s where the Warriors stand right now, embodying and defying fundamental rules simultaneously. Jump-shooting teams can’t win, except when they never lose. You can’t fall in love with the jumper, except when you’re Stephen Curry and your jumper always loves you back. A big man standing shorter than 6-foot-6 in socks can’t guard anybody, except when he’s Draymond Green and he guards everybody.
Fans are showing up to see the rule-breaking unleashed. There’s a buzz in the arena for every road game, and the din only grows louder. Warriors interim coach Luke Walton called the scene “a circus.” Thousands are teeming before games to watch Curry practice jumpers, a unique phenomenon in the league.
“It is what it is at this point,” Green said of the road circus. “It’s not going away. It is what it is, and we rock out how we rock out.”
How Curry, Green (22 points, nine rebounds, seven assists in another All-Star performance), Klay Thompson (21 points on 8-for-18 shooting) and the rest of the Dubs rock out makes them the best show in town, no matter which town they’re in. No wonder the kids are beside themselves.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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