San Francisco – The Warriors notched their biggest win fo the season with their 125-90 win over the Milwaukee Bucks. Tonight’s 35-point margin of victory marked their largest win of the season (prev. 28, 10/30 at NOP).With a full roster available Golden State’s head coach Steve Kerr said before the game that we should do the math because someone was getting left out of the rotation.
“You just do the math and there’s going to be some people who are left out of the rotation. There’s no getting around it. So, we’re just trying to do what we think is right based on how we’ve been playing, and who’s been playing, and who’s been playing well, that sort of thing, and just try to do everything we can to win the game.”
Tonight, everyone on the roster played, it was a collective effort from all. The Warriors played their best defensive game yet, 51 defensive rebounds and 13 blocks shots, Rookie Trayce Jackson-Davis had 15 points in 19 minutes along with 6 rebounds and a career-high tying 4 block shots (10/30 vs NOP) on Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The Warriors have won eight of their last 11 home games vs. the Bucks, including the last four consecutively. Golden State improved to 17-7 vs. teams from the Eastern Conference, including 9-3 at home. They also improved to 5-0 when holding their opponent to fewer than 100 points. The Warriors held Milwaukee to nine fourth-quarter points, the fewest the team has allowed in any quarter this season (prev. 14, 2/23 vs. CHA).
Stephen Curry scored 20-or-more points for the 46th time this season. He sank six threes, marking the league-leading 25th time he’s made at least six 3-pointers in a game on the season.
Jonathan Kuminga tallied his 17th game of 20-or-more points this season. It marked the 39th time in the last 41 games he has scored in double figures. He tied a career-high with three blocks (third time).
“I think they had like 20 points off of turnovers, said Antetokounmpo. “You know we could talk a lot about the defense or the offense, at the end of the day we got to do better, they scored 125 points. In the half they had 78. In the first six minutes of the third quarter, I think we came out and we were aggressive, being physical, making them shoot tough shots. You know, in the first couple of minutes they had a five or eight-point run. After that, the moment that the ball is not moving, we’re not passing it, we’re not giving energy, now our defense isn’t that good.”
Photo by GSW/Twitter
Warriors pregame press conference
WARRIORS HEAD COACH STEVE KERR
ON WHAT HE EXPECTS THE ROTATION TO BE TONIGHT WITH EVERYONE AVAILABLE:
“You just do the math and there’s going to be some people who are left out of the rotation. There’s no getting around it. So we’re just trying to do what we think is right based on how we’ve been playing, and who’s been playing, and who’s been playing well, that sort of thing, and just try to do everything we can to win the game.”
ON HOW OFTEN HE LOOKS AT THE STANDINGS AND IF HE SEES A PATTERN:
“Every day, every day. I mean this is the deepest that I’ve ever seen either conference I would say because night after night it feels like you’re swimming upstream. Everybody is good. I think, I don’t know we’ve won like 13 out of 16 and we’re still 10th. So maybe we’ve moved up from 11th, maybe when this run started maybe we were further back. But we have made up a lot of ground and we are within striking distance of a lot of teams so we feel good about that. But we’ve got to keep playing at a high level if we want to make any more ground up.”
ON HOW DIFFERENT THE BUCKS LOOK DEFENSIVELY UNDER DOC RIVERS:
“Well just to get ready for this game I watched their last two against Chicago, or one against Chicago or one against the Clippers the other night. They’re playing some zone, definitely mixing in some zone, trying to disrupt team’s rhythm a little bit with that. Looks to me like they’ve gotten back to the drop-coverage with (Brook) Lopez and even with Giannis (Antetokounmpo) some, depending on matchups. They’ll come out of a timeout and they’ll be switching one through five. Looks to me like they’re trying to disrupt rhythm by changing coverages but their base coverage is what they’ve been doing in the past and they look more comfortable with that.”
BUCKS HEAD COACH DOC RIVERS
ON FACING A TEAM THAT PLAYS LIKE THE WARRIORS:
“It’s a tough one. I use the term ‘You gotta get your hands on them.’ Because we’re big so we want to get our hands on everybody. It’s tough to get your hands on Steph (Curry), he’s running around. So it’s a good test for us. Teams like this are difficult. I always look at it as a good thing, we’ll learn something. If we do well, we know what we’re doing. If we don’t, we’ll keep moving on and figure out, ‘Okay, this is what we have to do differently.’ You also can never overreact to anything that Steph Curry does. We’re not gonna change our defense after the game if he has a great game because there’s not a lot of them walking the earth. Thank God.”
