Warriors seal playoff homecourt advantage, landmark 70th win in rout of Spurs

OAKLAND – As notches in the championship belt go, the Golden State Warriors’ latest is nothing to shoot an airball at.

By beating the San Antonio Spurs 112-101 on Thursday at Oracle Arena, they not only secured the top seed in the Western Conference and homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs but also became just the second team in the 67-year history of the NBA to win 70-plus games in the regular season.

The Warriors (70-9), who play at the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday, at the Spurs on Sunday and finish with a home game against the Grizzlies on Wednesday – must win all three to surpass the Michael Jordan-led Bulls team that, for now, still has the 72-10 gold standard for records. Only the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers and the 96-97 Bulls had reached 69-win mark.

It took a well-timed rout to get there, one that surely quelled all the angst among Warriors fans that followed their team’s two-losses-in-three-games stretch coming in. The Friday loss to Boston was a gut-punch because it ruined their home-court perfection. The Tuesday loss to Minnesota, in addition to being a coming-out party of sorts for the upstart Timberwolves, was enough to make you wonder if fatigue wasn’t coming into play after months of chasing history.

The Warriors needed this – especially after what happened the last time the league’s two best teams met.

In the Spurs’ 87-79 win at the AT&T Center on March 19, the Warriors’ genie otherwise known as Stephen Curry had been jammed back into the bottle by the league’s best defense. This time, with the kind of space and swagger that was never allowed when he had misfired on 11 of 12 three-pointers, he finished with 27 points (11 of 19 shooting overall, three of seven from three-point range), nine assists and five rebounds.

In that suffocating Spurs win, LaMarcus Aldridge’s two-way proficiency had been a clear sign that his comfort level – along with San Antonio’s title chances – was on the rise. This time, after a first-quarter finger injury sidelined him when the Warriors led 15-13 before he later returned, he finished with 11 points (five of 16 shooting) and three rebounds in 30 minutes. His counterpart, the Warriors’ Draymond Green, was the one playing in championship form with a 18-point, seven-assist, six-rebound night.

The Warriors, who shot 54.2% overall and surely benefited from Harrison Barnes’ 21-point outing, had their way in the matchup that could very well be a Western Conference Finals preview. The Spurs (65-13), who need to beat the Warriors on Sunday and the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday to become the first team in NBA history to go undefeated at home, had their fill.

Until next time.