Stephen Curry Leads Warriors In Undefeated 14th Victory
The Golden State Warriors experienced their 14th, undefeated victory this season with their game against the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls started out strong, but they quickly lost steam against Stephen Curry and the rest of the Warrior’s solid defense and offense.
At the heart of the Warrior’s success is Stephen Curry, a point guard who has some impressive stats already early in the season. He managed to squeeze out 27 points against the Bulls, holding off the Chicago Bulls on their Friday night game that ended 106-94.
Curry expressed the team’s emotions about that future goal to ESPN.
“It’s a goal that’s right here and now and it’s something that we want to experience. It’d be a huge accomplishment because doing something that hasn’t been done in the history of the league is special. You never know if this opportunity will come back again. There are so many variables that go into winning this many in a row, especially the start of the season.”
With this victory, the Warriors may not have beat the record of most undefeated games in a season, but they’ve already broken the record of the only defending champions to win the first 14 games of the preseason. The last time that happened was more than 50 years ago in the season of 1957-58 with the Celtics.
“We have a chance to do something special in history, mark our place,” says point guard Shaun Livingston to ESPN. “If we have a chance to do it, why not?”
When the season began, there was no denying that the Warriors would go far, but this is the first time in several years that any team in the NBA has won this many games at the beginning of the season.
Another record is floating around the opposite way. The Philadelphia 76ers are 0 and 13, marking the first time in more than a decade that a major league team has gone that long without winning a game. They’re set to play the Miami Heat tonight, and it’s predicted that that record will go up to 0 and 14.
Curry’s team had their work cut out for them with some impressive stats from the Bulls. Jimmy Butler also shined with 28 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists.
Kirk Hinrich also made an impressive three-pointer that tied the game at 89 points, only to be knocked down again by Curry sinking a three.
Curry wasn’t the only member of the Warriors team who played well during Friday night’s game, either. Harrison Barnes also added 20 points and nine rebounds to the game, effectively bumping them up to the lead position.
“First of all, I thought we really competed. We battled, battled them the whole game. They made a couple of big plays down the stretch. We couldn’t get it back on the other end. But if we battle like that we’re going to win a lot of basketball games this year. We wanted to hold them to 10 threes or under… We took care of the ball. We didn’t give them a lot of run outs off of turnovers and that was a big goal of ours as well. We didn’t attack well enough down the stretch. But again, you play with that kind of effort we’re going to be fine.”
The Warriors interim coach, Luke Walton, also had some words of encouragement for his team. He and the rest of the coaching staff couldn’t be more pleased with their performance so far. Though the team has been performing well, they are showing some signs of fatigue from the mounting pressure. Walton made a statement regarding this to ESPN.
“It’s two things. It’s people wanting to be the first team to give us a loss and they’re coming out and playing like it’s a playoff game. This is the biggest game of the season for them so far. And, two, we’re not matching their intensity early on. We were thrilled with the effort we had earlier in the season as far as the way we were starting games. That was one of our focal points in training camp this year.”
Stephen Curry and the Warriors are set to play again on Sunday; this time, they’ll be up against the Denver Nuggets, and it’s more than likely the Warriors’ record will go up to 15 undefeated games.
[Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]
