OAKLAND, Calif. —€” Confetti lay strewn under the seats
throughout Oracle Arena well after the final buzzer. Taio Cruz sang
about putting his hands up in the air. For Golden State fans, a late-night celebration 82 games in the making had only just begun.
Inside the Warriors'
dressing room, however, whatever celebration occurred there had
dissipated by the time media members entered, replaced by the relatively
mundane sight of 15 guys sitting in front of their lockers checking
their phones.
It's not like they didn't care about breaking the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' NBA record with their 73
rd win Wednesday, a 125-104 drubbing
of the Memphis Grizzlies. On the contrary, Steph Curry had set up a
little shrine on his chair with his game jersey signed by his teammates,
his shoes and the net.
But it's hard to hold a full-on celebration when, as the PA announcer
reminded the fans afterward, "We'll see you back here this weekend for
the playoffs."
"It's history," center Andrew Bogut said of the accomplishment.
"But there is added pressure on us now to win the championship. With
great things comes more responsibility and this is one of those things."
"It would suck," Curry said, "to not finish the job off."
The Warriors know they won't be able to fully enjoy 73 if they
don't parlay it into 89 over the course of the next two months,
beginning with Saturday's Game 1 against the Houston Rockets. Which is
too bad, because their journey to this point has been so much fun.
And win No. 73 was no exception.
There was little doubt coming in that the Warriors would handle
undermanned Memphis, which could have turned Wednesday's game into an
anticlimactic coronation. Curry assured otherwise.
The presumptive MVP came in needing eight three-pointers to notch
400 on the season, a previously incomprehensible number given no one
had ever gotten to 300. That little subplot quickly rose to the
forefront when Curry hit six of them in the first quarter, including a
stretch of three straight possessions.
By that point, the anticipation in the arena was palpable every
time he touched the ball anywhere outside the arc. The roars were
thunderous when his shots fell through the net, and the groans ever
deeper any time he missed.
Curry added his seventh in the second quarter before missing two
last-second tries for elusive No. 8 just before the half. But that came
soon enough, 42 seconds into the third quarter, on a contested shot from
the right arc.
When the ball went down, Curry, well aware of the moment, turned
to the crowd and raised his arms. A couple of minutes later he added
401. Soon it was 402.
Mind you, his previous record —€” set just a year earlier — was a measly 286.
"I'm amazed by Steph, especially as a shooter, to get 400 threes
in a seaon," Klay Thompson said. "That's so hard to do. People don't
realize it. And he makes it look easy."
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Opponents are planning a protest outside the venue and
also will hold vigil at the site where an Ecuadorean immigrant was
killed in 2008.
