No surprises here.
There are a lot of games on the schedule that the Golden State Warriors should win. Games that, if they lose, you’d be annoyed and frustrated by, and feel almost betrayed over; yet you recognize that even the best teams lose a few of those games each year.
And then there are a few games where a loss would be truly inexcusable. Games where you think the Warriors could arrive at the arena after swinging by a nearby bar for a few rounds, wear Birkenstocks instead of sneakers, and still win by double figures. Games where you need a word beyond “disappointing,” because it would be disappointing if Steph Curry had to play in the fourth quarter.
Tuesday was one of those games and don’t worry, this hasn’t been an elaborate lede to set up a disappointing conclusion. The Warriors handled business. They beat the Charlotte Hornets thoroughly and emphatically, as they were expected to and as they needed to.
The Warriors are clicking and the Hornets are … well … they’re playing basketball games in the NBA, I guess. They entered Tuesday’s game with just 14 wins to their name, and having lost the last two by a combined 95 points. They were playing the second game of a back-to-back, and they were missing their best player.
And so the stage was set for a blowout, and a blowout is exactly what the Warriors delivered, beating the Hornets 128-92 which, yes, gave Charlotte the worst three-game point differential in NBA history, by a comfortable margin.
It did, however, take a few minutes to get started. The Warriors offense was rough in the opening minutes, which certainly wasn’t due to anything Charlotte did — the Dubs just looked a little uninterested, and their jump shots were ice cold. A few seconds after the halfway mark of the quarter, the Hornets led 14-9.
And then the Warriors quickly figured things out and turned things on. They found a little energy and scored seven consecutive points. The Hornets then scored befroe Curry, playing in front of his brother Seth (a Hornets guard) and his dad Dell (Charlotte’s color commentator) rattled off eight consecutive points to cap a 15-2 run. With Gui Santos playing with more energy than Charlotte’s entire roster, the Warriors led 28-18 at the end of the quarter, despite not playing very well.
It turned into a 23-4 run that spanned the end of the first and the start of the second. The Dubs were putting the clamps on the Hornets, though it wasn’t entirely clear if it was good defense or atrocious offense. Probably a little bit of both. Gary Payton II had a brilliant quarter as the Warriors pushed the lead larger and larger, but then Charlotte caught fire at the very end of the quarter with three quick threes to make things interesting. But Moses Moody had an answer, draining a very difficult corner three to end the half, sending the Dubs to the lockers with a 56-41 lead.
Charlotte showed a little fight to open the second half, but it was short lived. Steve Kerr immediately called a timeout to snuff it out, and when they returned from the break Draymond Green took over on both ends of the court. It sparked a 13-1 run that effectively ended the game, and soon the lead was 30 points. It slowly grew from there, with the benches starting to empty before we even reached the final quarter. A tip-in by Kevin Knox II at the buzzer gave the Dubs a commanding 97-65 lead going into the fourth.
There was no drama to even pretend to keep an eye out for. When the fourth quarter began, Charlotte’s white flag lineup was already on the court, and the back of Kerr’s bench was in, too. The only thing left to do was watch the youngsters and 10-day contracts make their cases for more minutes … and to watch Quinten Post mix it up with the Hornets, ultimately earning his first career ejection — and a whole lot of high-fives from Draymond — with under 30 seconds remaining (Moussa Diabaté was also ejected).
With the Dubs blowing out their opponent, everyone was able to get in on the action.
Knox got nearly 15 minutes of action, while Pat Spencer and Yuri Collins got more than 10 minutes each, and Jackson Rowe more than eight. They didn’t have a player score 20, but a whopping seven players reached double figures: Buddy Hield (16), Curry (15), Green (15), Payton (14), Moody (13), Knox (12), and Brandin Podziemski (10). They once again dominated in the paint, with a 62-38 advantage, and in taking care of the ball and converting on stops: they scored 37 points off 24 Charlotte turnovers, while the Hornets had just 19 points off 11 turnovers.
Business handled. Now the Dubs get a day off before kicking off a five-game road trip with a visit to the Orlando Magic on Thursday.