San Francisco -Aaron Gordon scored 38 points, and Russell Westbrook recorded a triple-double as the Denver Nuggets secured a 114-105 victory over the Warriors, despite missing two of their best players, Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokić, due to injuries.
Tonight’s loss snapped Golden State’s season-high seven-game winning streak—their last defeat came on March 1 against Philadelphia. The Warriors have now lost nine straight games to the Nuggets overall and six consecutive home games against Denver. They trail 0-2 in the season series, with the final matchup set for April 4 at Chase Center. Golden State recorded a season-high 10 blocks (previously nine, twice) and matched their season-high with 16 steals (fourth time this season).
“It’s hard to win an NBA game when you throw the ball to the other team 10 times,” said Steve Kerr. “That’s what we were facing tonight. They played a great game. The minute we heard all those guys are out, it’s like, ‘alright guys, here we go.’ We’ve seen this a million times. This is how it works in the NBA. The other team’s guys are going to go nuts; they can’t wait to play, there’s no pressure. Seen it a lot and we didn’t respond right away. We played poorly out of the gate and never found rhythm. They played great, the right team won. We didn’t deserve that, we were awful.”
Draymond Green became the sixth player in franchise history to reach 6,000 career rebounds, joining Nate Thurmond, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Smith, Clyde Lee, and Paul Arizin. He also matched his season high with five blocks, previously recorded on October 30 against the Pelicans.
“Our care for the basketball. I think we turn it over way too much,” Jimmy Butler said. “We were very loose with the basketball, careless with it. Got them into the open floor and that saw the ball go in early and it never stopped.
It hurts me, I ain’t gonna lie to you. I hate turning the ball over. I hate when we turn the ball over, we just have to be better at that. If we get shots on goal, I think we’re a very hard team to beat. But you’re not going to beat too many people in this league, no matter who is on the floor, with over 20 turnovers.”
Butler recorded his 15th game this season with 20 or more points, including his sixth with the Warriors. Golden State is now 14-2 in games he has played.
Stephen Curry scored 20-plus points for the 42nd time this season, achieving the mark in 17 of his last 20 games.
Gary Payton ll recorded his 11th game of double-figure scoring and has accomplished the feat four times in the last six games.
“We just came out flat,” said Payton. “We have a habit of coming out flat and just tonight it was just too much to fight uphill and try to–we would have had it but it was just too much at the end. Too many turnovers led to easy points. It was just too much of an uphill battle late, fighting the turnovers, trying to get stops. Guys were excited to play. We knew they were going to be excited to play. Russ (Russell Westbrook) did what he wanted to do, Michael (Porter Jr.) took a lot of shots that he wanted to do, AG (Aaron Gordon) did too. It was just turnovers.”
Photo by GSW/X
