Duncan or not, Curry and Warriors again show they are fearsome big-game force

Jonathan Raymond writes that regardless of the San Antonio Spurs' investment in Monday night's marquee NBA meeting, the champions showed their proclivity for performing under pressure.

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry reacts after a basket against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night in his team's victory. Macio Jose Sanchez / AP / January 25, 2016

It was just one game, and Tim Duncan didn’t even play. That acknowledged? Right. Good.

Still: the Golden State Warriors are a terrifying force in big games.

Monday night's 30-point rout of the San Antonio Spurs was a signifier. Facing the NBA's second-best, the one team right now that could conceivably challenge them straight up – cast doubt on their greatness – brought out of Golden State their most committed. Not dissimilar to the 34-point beatdown a week ago of the Cleveland Cavaliers, which came after a string of two losses in three games that brought into doubt, well certainly not the Warriors' quality, but their focus for a moment.

Read more: Jonathan Raymond on the DeMarcus Cousins, Willie Cauley-Stein and the Kings actually building something in Sacramento

The two points this season where the Warriors have felt they had something to prove, resulting in victory by a combined 64 points.

When they went down to the Memphis Grizzlies 2-1 in the Western Conference semi-finals in May, they won the next three games by 17, 20 and 13 to advance.

When they beat the Houston Rockets by just five combined in two tough games to start the next series, they won Game 3 away by 35.

And, of course, in the NBA Finals, when Cleveland had them rattled and down 2-1, they won the next three by 19, 13 and 12 to claim the title.

They are at their best when the stakes are biggest.

Monday’s game featured plenty of the dizzying interplay we already know Golden State are capable of. Frenetic, seemingly telepathic passing, interweaving off-ball darts and cuts, deadening defence, Stephen Curry doing stupefying Stephen Curry stuff.

All signifying that, even with Tim Duncan out for the opposition, the Warriors still approached this game like it mattered – a lot.

And when these Warriors care, when they feel the creep of pride impinged, they are devastating.

They didn’t just dig out of holes against Memphis and Cleveland in last season’s play-offs, they leapt out and ruthlessly shoved their opponents in. And they didn’t just beat San Antonio, a team with the league’s best defence, with the best point differential and net rating and a real case, before Monday night, to claiming superiority. They bellowed from the top of NBA mountain and buried the Spurs in an avalanche.

"No moment's too big," Curry told the Associated Press afterward. "Obviously."

There was, Curry added, “some hype around” this game.

“Every time we have an opportunity to prove who we are and take another step in the journey, we’re ready for it.”

Stepping back and regaining perspective for a second, that is what can nonetheless be taken away from this game. No, Duncan didn’t play and the Spurs seemed to decide to reserve any fight for another day once things began to get out of hand.

For that, we can say this does not, definitively, mean anything. At least anything definitively about San Antonio.

But we can say that the Warriors were, regardless of however much the Spurs were or were not able to disprove it, ready again to prove who they are. To remind the basketball world, if it needed reminding, just how crazy good they can be when they want.

And this, more than anything, is what is hard to reconcile in trying to foresee these Warriors somehow being dethroned – by the Spurs or any other challengers. Golden State are not going 82-0 this year. It will be hard yet to even go 72-10 to match the NBA’s record season. They will, inevitably as any team, lose the occasional random game. They already have, against teams like the Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets – teams which cannot even dream of winning the title.

But it has now been a long time since these Warriors lost one of the biggest games. The ones they see as must-win, or signifying something larger.

They now have a growing track record of swelling into circumstances, of feeding on moments.

Tim Duncan or not, the sense you get is that this was always going to be on display against San Antonio.

Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE

Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport