BOSTON — At Golden State media day in September, superstar guard Stephen Curry gave a mild declaration of intent for this season when he said 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.”
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 on Wednesday night.
Despite a victory over the defending champions — one that saw the Warriors end the night with the NBA’s third-best offense, second-best defense and best net rating (plus-15.5 points per 100 possessions) — Curry said he wasn’t ready to give Golden State too much credit.
“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. “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% of their season, but the early returns are exceedingly encouraging. Golden State, which won its first title under coach Steve Kerr in 2015 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. With Brandin Podziemski out because of an illness Wednesday, Golden State played 11 players — and all of them received at least 13 minutes.
As a result, the Warriors had a constant rotation of fresh defenders to throw at the Celtics and wreaked havoc on Boston’s offense. Though the Celtics hit their usual bushel of 3-pointers, finishing 19-for-54 from beyond the arc, they committed 12 turnovers and, outside of a 41-point explosion in the third quarter, generally looked out of sorts offensively for large stretches in ways they typically have not been over the past few seasons.
“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 for a loose ball with 4:18 left, giving Golden State the ball with Boston holding a 97-96 lead after Kerr called a timeout. Over the next three-plus 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 an air ball corner 3 by Draymond Green.
It was reminiscent of Looney’s dominant rebounding in the 2022 NBA Finals, when Golden State closed out Boston in six games, and underscored the way the Warriors won this game through their physicality and force at both ends.
“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.”
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 during Team USA’s run to 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 a tough early-season stretch only gives credence to them being more than a flash in the pan. Their trip next takes them to undefeated Cleveland on Friday, Oklahoma City on Sunday and then back home for Klay Thompson’s return with the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday before facing Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies three days later.
While it remains to be seen how long they can continue to play this way with so many contributors, Curry said he was 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 pregame, it’s the same message. So it is who we are right now. It’s who we have to be.”
