SAN ANTONIO -- Entering Wednesday’s contest, the only teams the Golden State Warriors had yet to defeat this season were the Washington Wizards and San Antonio Spurs.
After the Warriors and Spurs met, the Wizards are now the lone squad.
The Warriors overcame a 22-point first-quarter deficit to steal a 110-98 victory over the Spurs at AT&T Center. Golden State has won nine in a row and now has a three-and-a-half-game cushion on the Spurs in the race for the Western Conference's top playoff seed with seven games remaining on the schedule.
“It’s a big win, obviously,” Stephen Curry said. “Everything was kind of stacked against us after that first quarter.”
In their previous two meetings this season, San Antonio (57-17) beat Golden State (61-14) by an average of nearly 26 points. It looked as though the Spurs were on their way to another rout Wednesday, but Curry (29 points), Klay Thompson (23 points) and the reserves had other plans.
San Antonio jumped to a shocking 15-0 start. The Warriors appeared sluggish. They were slow to loose balls and careless with the ball and were outrebounded mightily in the first. With 5:01 remaining in the opening quarter, the Spurs led 23-3.
The aggressive Spurs pulled down seven offensive boards and dominated the glass 18-7 overall in the quarter. That assault on the glass allowed the home team to get up 10 more shot attempts than its opponent.
A frustrated Draymond Green was seen yelling “Box out!” to his Warriors teammates.
"I told somebody on the bench -- I think we were down like 22 -- I said, 'Yo, as crazy as this is about to sound, they’re up 22 points, and I don’t feel like they’re dominating us,'" Green said. "It’s, like, missed layups, turnover here, a missed offensive rebound here. Like, I never felt like they were dominating us. Now, don’t get me wrong. They definitely blitzed us, but it just wasn’t, like, where I felt like we couldn’t get our game and get control of the game back. It took a lot."
It was the second consecutive time the Warriors faced the Spurs in San Antonio on the second night of a back-to-back. Coming off a victory Tuesday in Houston, they looked fatigued early but caught a second wind in the second quarter.
Thompson scored 11 points in the period to fuel a 37-point quarter, and Golden State held the Spurs to 24. The Warriors' bench also provided a boost. David West and Andre Iguodala scored 15 and 14 points, respectively, and were instrumental in getting the team on track before intermission.
“We felt confident,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “An NBA game is such a long process, and you have to stay with it, and obviously, we’ve got a lot of firepower. We know we can get it going.”
Golden State tied the score before going into the break down three. Its first lead came early in the third quarter, and the Warriors extended it to eight later in the frame. The Spurs made a run and tied the score with 3:10 left in the third, but the Warriors were immediately able to pull away and never looked back.
Considering they’re playing without Kevin Durant, the victory was arguably the Warriors' biggest of the season.
"I thought the Spurs' defense was amazing in the first quarter," Kerr said. "But that’s a hard thing to do: to defend at that level for 48 minutes. We just wanted to continue to move the ball, drive it, move it on and make them have to defend."
San Antonio was held to 24 or fewer points in each of the final three quarters and to 41 percent shooting for the game.
"I thought they were a little sloppy defensively [in the first quarter]," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said, "but they got it back, certainly."
Curry and Thompson each connected on four 3-pointers. Kawhi Leonard scored 19 points but was 7-of-20 from the field and 0-of-5 from 3-point range. LaMarcus Aldridge had 17 points and six rebounds.
The Warriors and Spurs have a 62 percent chance to meet in the Western Conference finals, according to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index. San Antonio is now 9-2 against the top five teams in the league.
