Splash Brothers, Kevin Durant shine as Warriors beat Suns in shootout: Takeaways
Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant combined for 89 points.
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3 min read
With balanced scoring, the Golden State Warriors improved to 8-2 with a 133-120 win over the Phoenix Suns on Sunday. Stephen Curry scored 30 points on 9-for-17 shooting with six rebounds and six assists. Klay Thompson had 30 points on 11-for-18 shooting. Kevin Durant finished with 29 points on 10-for-21 shooting, with nine rebounds, five assists, a steal and two blocks.
Takeaways:
Splash, splash, splash. When the best backcourt in the NBA goes off, the Warriors have always been just about impossible to beat. It helps when Durant finds room to put up big numbers, too. All three of them got a reasonable amount of touches and shot attempts, and they're learning how to play off each other offensively. Whenever one of them made a big shot, all their teammates celebrated. It remains terrifying when they're all on the court and Golden State pushes the ball in transition.
If you missed the game, you can sort of get the point by simply looking at the box score. The Warriors aren't going to score 133 points every night, but the shot distribution is significant. Draymond Green shot 4-for-10, but made all five of his free throws almost came away with a double-double, finishing with 14 points, 11 assists, seven rebounds, three steals and two blocks. A bunch of bench players chipped in, but the three best shooters in the world did the heavy lifting offensively, as they should.
The Warriors let Phoenix hang around. This felt a bit like the first time these teams met, when Golden State won by six points on Halloween. The Suns played hard and looked pretty good, but some of it was the product of sloppy turnovers and defensive lapses from the Warriors. While the super team has made significant progress since the start of the season, this is an example of how they are still vulnerable. At times, their defense looks excellent, but they can be lured into a shootout.
Against the Warriors, life comes at you fast. Golden State had a 16-4 run in the second quarter and an 18-4 run in the fourth quarter. Credit the Suns for not getting demoralized either time, but the real takeaway is that letting teams hang around isn't a huge problem for the Warriors. When they need buckets, they can get them extremely quickly.
Phoenix has a bunch of weapons. The problem, this season, is that they haven't necessarily complemented each other well. In an up-and-down game like this, though, the Suns' talent shone through. T.J. Warren and Eric Bledsoe finished with 20 points apiece, Devin Booker added 19 and three players -- Jared Dudley, Leandro Barbosa and Brandon Knight -- scored in double digits off the bench. Once rookies Marquese Chriss and Dragan Bender develop, Phoenix is going to be interesting.
Speaking of Chriss ... He is an incredible athlete, and he had two mind-bending dunks in his 16 minutes. One was on the break:
And one was a putback:
Unfortunately, those were his only four points, but still: flashes of brilliance!
Earl Watson is creative. The second-year coach has shown he is bold when it comes to the starting lineup -- he announced in the preseason that Knight would come off the bench behind Bledsoe and Booker, and made rookie Chriss a starter this week. He's also fearless when it comes to non-traditional 5-man units: early on, he played Bledsoe, Barbosa, Warren, Dudley and P.J. Tucker together. That's two small guards and three combo forwards. Fun!
Your Patrick McCaw update: Contributing! In 18 minutes, McCaw played nothing like a rookie, hitting a pair of 3-pointers and generally playing mistake-free basketball by keeping the ball movement and playing solid defense. Part of that solid defense: a huge block against Booker that started the most exciting, insane sequence of the game:
This is the stuff that makes every Warriors game appointment viewing. What an effort by Durant, and what a stupendous shot from Curry.
Your JaVale McGee update: Sitting, mostly. He came into the game in the first quarter, just like he did in Denver on Thursday, but this time his impact was limited. He grabbed a rebound, made two free throws and changed a couple of shots in his three minutes, but then Phoenix went small and there was no place for him.
