Best of NBA: Thompson, Warriors rebound to rout Suns

“What they said was, ‘If you don’t ever grow again, you have to have some guard skills.’ So just them teaching me that early on was important and vital to my game”. “They do a great job of looking for me when I’m hot”. The exuberant displays of emotion made by the Bucks (10-17) in the waning moments of that historic win did not go unnoticed by the Golden State players.

The NBA has set up the more hard Western games for the Warriors in 2016: Three games with the Oklahoma City Thunder, four with the Spurs.

Curry and Thompson each hit a pair of threes, and Green dropped in a fifth during the run. Curry also had a pair of 2-pointers, giving him 10 of the Warriors’ 21 points. “We’ve got to send a message to them when they come to our building”. If opponents focus too much on the two sharpshooters or slack off from the ball-bearing Green, then the 6-foot-7, 230-pound bowling ball of a man will simply take the ball to the rim and score. “We all have to do our part”. But Thompson and Stephen Curry (25 points) simply would not be denied as they pushed the Warriors to 25-1 on the strength of their 128-103 victory.

“It was fun to watch”, Walton said of Thompson’s big night. There’s something about facing Phoenix’s up-and-down style that gets the Warriors going as they scored 135 points in their previous meeting. “I don’t know how you stop it”. “At a certain point it kind of became about just winning the game….”

Curry had 25 points and seven assists in just 30 minutes.

Thompson’s excellent night was a little more direct in its impressiveness. Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony scored a double-double of 20 points and 15 rebounds, falling one assist shy of a triple-double.

These teams don’t come around often, and with the way the league’s salary cap is structured and what some are willing to pay for players, it’s unlikely that this current core of Warriors will stay intact for two more seasons, much less longer. “We did it pretty decent for 18 minutes but you have to do it for all 48 minutes because they put them up quickly”.

Mirza Teletovic led the Suns with 24 points. The Warriors’ 11-0 home start is one win shy of the all-time franchise best of 12-0 accomplished in the 1975-76 season….

As the year began, LeBron James was pulling together an injury-hit Cleveland Cavaliers team in his first season back in his home region after vowing to make the Cavs a champion. Barnes is going to sit out this week and is going to be reevaluated at the end of the week. Hard-fought wins over the Indiana Pacers and Boston Celtics proceeded the end of the run, with the Milwaukee Bucks ensuring that there would be no further history making with a 108-95 win. He missed eight consecutive games with a strained right hamstring.

Bogut had an absolutely stellar game with 12 rebounds, three assists, a block, a steal, and a plus-43 over 21 minutes.