Warriors know 73 won't mean as much if they don't win a ring, too
OAKLAND, Calif. — Confetti lay strewn under the seats throughout Oracle Arena well after the final buzzer. Taio Cruz sang about putting his hands up in the air. For Golden State fans, a late-night celebration 82 games in the making had only just begun.
Inside the Warriors' dressing room, however, whatever celebration occurred there had dissipated by the time media members entered, replaced by the relatively mundane sight of 15 guys sitting in front of their lockers checking their phones.
It's not like they didn't care about breaking the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' NBA record with their 73rd win Wednesday, a 125-104 drubbing of the Memphis Grizzlies. On the contrary, Steph Curry had set up a little shrine on his chair with his game jersey signed by his teammates, his shoes and the net.
Steph Curry's locker post-73. pic.twitter.com/LLyKMNt4Mg
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 14, 2016
But it's hard to hold a full-on celebration when, as the PA announcer reminded the fans afterward, "We'll see you back here this weekend for the playoffs."
"It's history," center Andrew Bogut said of the accomplishment. "But there is added pressure on us now to win the championship. With great things comes more responsibility and this is one of those things."
"It would suck," Curry said, "to not finish the job off."
The Warriors know they won't be able to fully enjoy 73 if they don't parlay it into 89 over the course of the next two months, beginning with Saturday's Game 1 against the Houston Rockets. Which is too bad, because their journey to this point has been so much fun.
And win No. 73 was no exception.
There was little doubt coming in that the Warriors would handle undermanned Memphis, which could have turned Wednesday's game into an anticlimactic coronation. Curry assured otherwise.
The presumptive MVP came in needing eight three-pointers to notch 400 on the season, a previously incomprehensible number given no one had ever gotten to 300. That little subplot quickly rose to the forefront when Curry hit six of them in the first quarter, including a stretch of three straight possessions.
By that point, the anticipation in the arena was palpable every time he touched the ball anywhere outside the arc. The roars were thunderous when his shots fell through the net, and the groans ever deeper any time he missed.
Curry added his seventh in the second quarter before missing two last-second tries for elusive No. 8 just before the half. But that came soon enough, 42 seconds into the third quarter, on a contested shot from the right arc.
When the ball went down, Curry, well aware of the moment, turned to the crowd and raised his arms. A couple of minutes later he added 401. Soon it was 402.
Mind you, his previous record — set just a year earlier — was a measly 286.
"I'm amazed by Steph, especially as a shooter, to get 400 threes in a seaon," Klay Thompson said. "That's so hard to do. People don't realize it. And he makes it look easy."
Finally, coach Steve Kerr took pity on the poor Grizzlies — and on Curry's body — and rested him for the final quarter, but not before he scored 46 points on 24 shots.
His latest transcendent performance in an already dominant shooting season assured he finish the year with a 30-point scoring average and a spot in the so-called 50-45-90 Club (50 percent field goals, 45 percent three-pointers, 90 percent free throws).
"Obviously they're numbers that I've worked for and tried to elevate my game to that level," Curry said. "That 50-45-90 club, as a shooter, that's something I find pretty special."
The whole night was something special for the face of this franchise. His rookie year, 2009-10, Golden State won just 26 games. And that was fairly typical of the Warriors for the better part of two decades. That Curry would be part of another team here that six years later would lose just nine games in an entire season stuck with the 28-year-old as he took in the waning moments of No. 73 from the bench.
"It's really hard to put into words," he said afterward. "I mean, I remember my rookie year here and just the difference that last game of the season, what a different feel it was.
"But I really did take a moment. I don't think I was watching the game for about two minutes, just sitting, thinking about how far we've come, and the energy that in the building was unbelievable. So I just wanted to appreciate that."
All of the Warriors appreciated the moment in their own way. Kerr, who played on the Bulls team whose record his current team broke, told them in the locker room how proud he was.
But from the sounds of it, they'll be turning the page fairly quickly. A new more important season begins Saturday.
"No matter what happens, this has been an incredible season," Kerr said. "But obviously it takes on a different meaning if we go on and win the title."
"There are countless things we've accomplished this regular season," Curry said. "I know we can appreciate 73, but hopefully one day we can appreciate the entire body of work that we've accomplished. Hopefully we'll have the Larry O'Brien Trophy next to us here in a couple months."
Hopefully their playoff run will be even half as fun as the 82 games that preceded it.
