Curry helps Golden State extend winning run

“You struggle so much getting penetration, we didn’t suck the defense in and give ourselves those opportunities for 3s”.

The Knicks knocked the Nets out early, outscoring the Nets 42-21 in the first quarter on their way to a 108-91 win.

Grizzlies center Marc Gasol had a superb game as well, recording 22 points and eight rebounds.

The Golden State Warriors are off to the hottest start in National Basketball Association history. They led by as many as 17, at 26-9, and closed the first with a 30-16 lead.

Another Curry treble with 2:33 to play put the Warriors ahead 102-100.

Guard Jimmy Butler scored 25 points and pulled down eight rebounds for the Bulls. After a missed three by Bojan Bogdanovic, Curry lobbed an alley-oop from three-point territory to Festus Ezeli, who slammed it down for an 81-78 lead. The Warriors closed the third on a 15-4 run and a prolonged 24-9 run when Leandro Barbosa hit a three to make it 96-85 at the 9:44 mark of the fourth.

On the season, the Warriors average 115.1 points, 46.2 rebounds and 29.1 assists per game.

The Brooklyn Nets played hard on Sunday night.

On April 5, 1991, the Rockets went to McNichols Arena in Denver for a matchup with coach Paul Westhead’s entertaining but terrible Denver Nuggets.

“Things weren’t going our way in the second and third quarter, but defensively we kept our energy. I don’t know”, Warriors interim coach Luke Walton said.

That was the case in the third quarter Sunday night as Curry scored 16 of his 28 points in the third quarter to propel the Warriors to a 114-98 win over the Nets. Plus he has a great team. He doesn’t have to go out there and do it all of the time. Two nights ago in Charlotte, he had 40. “When he needs to he can and when he doesn’t need to he takes a backseat to those guys”. Draymond Green had 22 and Klay Thompson had 21.

“We will rely on our depth as we go into Brooklyn”, Curry said.

“A game like tonight on the road against a team that’s playing the way they did, for the entire game”. The cheers that followed, both during introductions and every time he touched the ball, easily drowned out Nets partisans. “Especially on this road trip we’re on, so it was great to see them respond like that”.

“Yeah, I do think about it, because I thought we should have beaten them out there”, Hollins said.

And that’s why he seems like the most improved most valuable player. “We like to close quarters out strong, and we were obviously able to do that, get a nice lead and not look back from there”. “They’re a resilient team”.

The Stephen Curry show travels north of the border when the Golden State Warriors visit the Toronto Raptors on Saturday. That’s what they came out and did in the first quarter.

“It’s really good”, Curry said of his team’s winning streak after the game.

NOTES: The Raptors celebrated the late Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize victor, with tributes before and during the game….