Warriors beat Grizzlies 125-104, set NBA record with 73-win season

The Golden State Warriors soon begin defense of their NBA championship against a tough Western Conference field, but they’ve already topped their first opponent.

The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, who set the standard for regular-season victories with 72, a record that seemed as unbreakable at Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

At least it did to Steve Kerr, a reserve guard who averaged 8.4 points and hit 52 percent of his threes that season.

“I never thought anybody would ever come close to breaking the record,” Kerr said.

But as he walked off the floor Wednesday night, Kerr, now the Warriors’ coach, went one victory better. The chase for history was completed.

In the final game of the regular season, the Warriors defeated the Memphis Grizzlies 125-104 and improved to an absurd final mark of 73-9.

“We’re part of history now,” said Warriors guard Brandon Rush, the Kansas Citian and former Kansas standout.

How unfathomable are 73 victories in an NBA season? That’s a winning percentage of .890. If the Royals, whose 95 victories led the American League last season, owned a similar winning percentage over a 162-game schedule they’d have won 144 games.

“I’m shocked we are where we are, just because I know how difficult it is,” Kerr said.

Yet the Warriors make it look easy by excelling at the very purpose of the game. They were without peer at putting the ball in the basket, and Wednesday they shot the lights out Oracle Arena.

The Warriors attempted 17 three-pointers in the first quarter, making nine with each one escalating the decibel level in the building, especially when Stephen Curry was doing his thing.

He entered the locker room during the late afternoon wearing a hunter’s hat and needing eight three-pointers to reach the jaw-dropping total of 400 for the year.

Curry set an NBA record with 286 threes last season. He went to another level, another planet, this year, turning games like Wednesday’s into his own version of Pop-A-Shot.

One from 30 feet, another by creating by space with a behind the back dribble, knocking them down from either wing or straight away, all adding to his ridiculous total. He had six triples in the first quarter and seven by halftime.

As the first half ended, Curry threw up a couple of challenged shots that rimmed off. He wouldn’t be denied in the third quarter.

Swish from the right side, 45 seconds into the quarter, and the noise was deafening for No. 400. When he rattled one in to end the third quarter, Curry, who finished with 46 points, was 10 of 19 from beyond the arc and finished the year with 402 triples. There’s next year’s target.

Curry is the ring-leader, a cinch to win his second straight MVP, but this is what the Warriors do. They take and make more three-pointers and convert them at a higher percentage than any team. They scheme and screen for the long-distance shots and in Curry have perhaps the greatest deep marksman in basketball history.

A shooting Babe Ruth or Wayne Gretzky.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Rush said. “To come down, pull up from 30 and make them as often as he does.”

He’s not alone. The team hoisted 47 three-point attempts, making 20 against the Grizzlies. Teams may live and die by outside shooting, but this is Golden State’s lifeblood.

It’s added up to the greatest run of all, one in which the Warriors became the first team in the NBA history to no lose consecutive games. Their 34 road victories are a league record, and that mark was set on Sunday when they broke a 33-game losing streak at San Antonio.

Plus they gave the home fans what they hungered as poured in with their signs that read “73” and were greeted with blue T-shirts on their seats that read “Not On Our Ground.”

The record set by Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and coach Phil Jackson had fallen, and Kerr felt like those Bulls’ were on his side. This wasn’t a deal like the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the NFL’s last perfect team. They pop champagne when the final undefeated team loses.

Before Wednesday game’s Kerr said he received an encouraging email from Jackson, plus he was aware of the congratulatory Twitter messages by Pippen and Ron Harper, his former Chicago teammates. Jordan reportedly told the Warriors’ Draymond Green at the All-Star break that he was pulling for a new standard-bearer.

“I felt their support,” Kerr said.

The Warriors finished the job.

“It means I’m a part of the best team ever,” Green said. “Not many people can say that. Fifteen guys can say that.”

But although the Warriors own the record, work remains. The Bulls made quick work of their 1996 playoff opponents, dropping a total of three games in four series.

The Warriors, who will open the playoffs against the Houston Rockets — the team they met in last season’s Western Conference finals — have to win their second straight title to continue the comparison.

They seemed ready after Wednesday’s rout.

“Definitely ready for the questions about the playoffs now,” Green said.

This story was originally published April 14, 2016 at 1:44 AM with the headline "Warriors beat Grizzlies 125-104, set NBA record with 73-win season."