Written by Chris Ballard at SI.com
Steph Curry wasn’t letting go of the ball. Not after that game, and this season. He hugged it, pounded it, kept it close, even as he embraced Draymond Green and leapt to shoulder-bump Marreese Speights and dapped everyone in sight, down to the team’s director of social media. The Warriors hit the magic 72 on Sunday night but, really, it was Steph and Draymond who got them there. They were the two who pushed for this mark, who took turns spurring the team when it faltered—Draymond in text messages and timeout sermons and then in frenzied play against Memphis and in the first half at San Antonio. Then Curry had an all-you-can-do-is-shake-your-head second half and 37 points to close out a 92–86 win that Steve Kerr, in a private moment after the game, likened to, “a playoff war out there.”
Technically, of course, the game decided nothing—no playoff positioning changed—but it signified plenty. The end of the Spurs home mystique—their perfect home season, along with a staggering 33-game regular season home win streak against the Warriors. The cementing of Curry’s competitive legend. And, one got the feeling, the inevitability of a Golden State repeat.
From the start, the night felt momentous. Pop may have claimed not to care about the dual records on the line, but not so San Antonio fans. From the REP SPURS T-shirts on sale at the airport to the GO SPURS GO sign swathing a downtown building to the vigorous rally fans held on the Riverwalk at 7 p.m. Saturday night—complete with chants and one gentleman dressed as some bizarre lucha version of Kawhi—the city was pumped. Not just for Sunday’s game, but Saturday’s. At one bar south of downtown, The Friendly Spot, fans gathered in metal chairs, clutching beers and watching the Grizzlies-Warriors game on a giant inflatable projection screen with the volume jacked up. The bar even pulled the Warriors CSN feed, with Bob Fitzgerald and Jim Barnett, rather than ESPN.
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