SAN FRANCISCO — After not leading for a single second against the Knicks on Monday, the Warriors handled business.
A 22-0 run that wrapped around halftime — the franchise’s biggest run since 2021 — surged the Warriors past the outmanned Grizzlies.
Jonathan Kuminga (26 points) and Andrew Wiggins (22 points) combined to shoot 21-for-31 (68%) from the field. Klay Thompson added 23 and Chris Paul notched a season-high 14 dimes off the bench as the Warriors (36-32) fully controlled the second half in a 137-116 victory. The blowout allowed veterans Steph Curry and Draymond Green to get off their feet for much of the fourth quarter, which is a major win for two players who have dealt with recent injuries.
As a team, Golden State tallied a season-high 43 assists while committing only seven turnovers.
“The ball was moving beautifully,” Steve Kerr said postgame.
The Grizzlies — without Ja Morant, Marcus Smart, Brandon Clarke and Luke Kennard — launched 3 after 3 and crashed the offensive glass hard, trying to muck up the game with shooting variance and physicality.
For a short-handed team with the worst offense in the league, they needed to scrap however they could to generate offense.
It worked well enough for the Grizzlies to make the Warriors sweat in the first half. So well, frustrations began to boil.
After Santi Aldama skied for an offensive rebound and scored inside over Draymond Green, the Warriors center shoved him in the chest.
That chippiness went uncalled, but more extracurriculars ensued. Moments later, after a Grizzlies timeout, Green walked toward Aldama by Memphis’ bench and was confronted by Desmond Bane, who’s built like an edge rusher. Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins hit the deck in the kerfuffle, which ended with offsetting technicals on Green and Bane.
The Warriors knew Memphis would play hard. They didn’t know Aldama would shoot the way he did. The 6-foot-11 stretch big came in at 34.2% from deep but hit six of his first nine tries.
But the scrum Aldama partly incited seemed to kick Golden State into gear. By being much more physical at the point of attack, closing out hard to Aldama and getting their hands into passing lanes, the Warriors broke the game open with that 22-0 run to bridge the end of the first half and the third quarter.
Over that four-minute blitz, Wiggins got loose for a pair of transition finishes, Aldama air-balled a 3 and Kuminga soared for two transition slams. Kuminga has now scored at least 20 points in nine of his past 12 games and holds the franchise record in the play-by-play era for dunks in a season.
“It’s the force that he played with tonight,” Kerr said. “I thought it was maybe the best game I’ve ever seen him play. At both ends. He was playing with intensity defensively, got deflections, he was guarding the ball. But the way he played downhill, spreading the floor. He is so fast. He’s electric. And he’s really learning to use that more often in key times.”
Steph Curry also broke loose to crack the 300 3-pointer mark on the season, which he has done five times in his illustrious career. There are only two other such seasons.
Curry didn’t have to shoulder too heavy a load against the Grizzlies. Kuminga and Wiggins slashed constantly, helping the Warriors outscore Memphis 62-46 in the paint. Their force controlled a tension-less second half; Curry and Green only needed to log 24 minutes.
Deploying Green almost exclusively at center allows the Warriors to play Kuminga and Wiggins simultaneously. The pair of forwards have had to figure out how to share the court together to optimize the team’s athleticism. Golden State won the transition battle 20 to three in large part due to their frontcourt pushing the pace off misses and turnovers.
The combination hasn’t always been pretty. But it was a winning formula Wednesday.
