Programming note: Warriors-Jazz coverage starts tonight at 5pm with Warriors Pregame Live on CSN Bay Area, and streaming live right here.
OAKLAND – Dropping jaws around the NBA and beyond, the Warriors keep tossing staggering, spectacular numbers at the world and the planet can’t get enough.
Their latest feat came Tuesday night, when a relatively haphazard 102-94 win over the utterly defective Washington Wizards gave the Warriors their 67th win of the season, tying the franchise record set last season with eight games remaining.
“Mindboggling,” coach Steve Kerr said. “I could never have imagined anything like this. But a lot of things have gone our way this year and the guys have done an amazing job coming off of last year and focusing in on getting better and trying to continue the rise. It’s not easy to do in this league. It takes a lot of energy, so I’m really proud of them for the way they have competed for 74 games.”
The Warriors are now a preposterous 60 games over .500, and if the statistics seem beyond imagination, it’s only because they are. Nobody saw this coming, yet it keeps on coming.
“I thought we would get better but maybe our record would get a little worse,” Kerr said. “So this is surprising to be where we are right now, record-wise.”
Steph Curry, whose 26 points Tuesday night led all scorers, is in full agreement with his coach.
“I was under the same impression,” he said, “that our record might not be indicative of the progress we might have made as a team over the course of the season, and not to get discouraged if we couldn’t match what we did last year, knowing the ultimate goal is to win a championship.”
Win No. 67 was accompanied by consecutive home win No. 54, an ongoing NBA record, and a record of 36-0 this season at Oracle Arena as the Warriors seek to go where no team has gone before -- unbeaten at home.
It was a blue-collar special, too, which made it perfect for forward/center Draymond Green, who headed for the showers with 15 points, a game-high 16 rebounds, a team-high nine assists and two blocked shots.
“Everybody in the league knows how much Draymond means to what we do and how much he means at both ends of the floor,” Kerr said. “A phenomenal player.”
It was Green and Curry who sparked runs late in the second quarter to snap the Warriors awake after they fell behind by nine (46-37, 3:02 left in the half) to a Washington team that still has playoff aspirations.
The Warriors don’t often trail in any game, certainly not at home, yet here were the Wizards playing with incentive and bringing the game to the defending champs.
“Really, I think that gear kicks in when we get punched in the mouth,” guard Shaun Livingston said. “Teams coming out and going up on us, out pride gets tested and that competitive gear kicks in.”
Yet the Warriors didn’t put away the Wizards (36-38) until late third quarter and early in the fourth. A Livingston jumper followed by a Green 3-pointer touched off a 13-1 run that put the Warriors in control, leading 87-73 with 9:32 remaining.
Washington rallied late, closing the final three minutes with an 8-2 run that was insufficient as well as too late.
And with that, win No. 67 was in the books. The Warriors need to win six of their last eight games to post the best single-season record in NBA history.
They’re better in many ways, and the numbers show it.
“As you go through the season and kind of get lost in the journey, you should be able to accomplish both – be a better team and better our record, which we’re on our way to doing,” Curry said.
The Warriors still are coming to grips with their season being on a historical path. They won 24 straight to open the season. They haven’t lost two in a row all season. They haven’t lost more than two games in a month all season.
Not even Green, who always seems to believe anything is possible, as his own game suggests, anticipated this.
“Honestly, no, not coming into this season,” he said. “But once we got off the start that we got off to, I thought it would be possible. But you can’t come into the season expecting to win 67.”
Which, we suppose, means they’ve exceeded not only expectations but also the wildest conceivable projections.
