Written by Stewart Mandell at FoxSports.com
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.
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.
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