By Steph Curry reached yet another historic scoring milestone on Friday as his Golden State Warriors maintained their on-court improvement since the NBA’s trade deadline earlier this month.
Curry scored 20 points in the Warriors’ 132-108 win over the Sacramento Kings, in doing so becoming the 21st player in NBA history – and first Golden State player – to score 20 or more points in 700 games.
When put to him, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr couldn’t hide his amazement at the achievement, saying: “That’s pretty impressive.”
Curry reached 20 points by going 7-for-13 on his field goal attempts, including hitting four three points and both of his two attempts from the free-throw line.
Moses Moody and Buddy Hield top-scored for the Warriors with 22 points, while second-year guard Brandin Podziemski added 21 points.
Friday’s victory continued Golden State’s improvement after the trade deadline and their blockbuster acquisition of Jimmy Butler from the Miami Heat.
The Bay Area team has now gone 4-1 with Butler in the line-up – the 35-year-old had 17 points, seven assists and three rebounds in the win over the Kings – as they look to move up the Western Conference standings.
The Warriors currently sit in ninth position in the conference, two-and-a-half games outside the playoff positions.
And Curry stressed how important the back-half of the season is for the team coming out of the NBA All-Star break.
“We have a 27-game playoff push. I mean, we finished before the break 3-1 with Jimmy on the squad and the Dallas game (on Sunday) and tonight are huge to keep momentum and maintain it coming to this first stretch out the break,” Curry told reporters after the win over Sacramento.
“So you don’t want to talk it up too much because every game is important to be honest, but from practice yesterday, shootaround this morning, we were pretty locked in, it was a good energy, a good understanding about what we needed to do to win this particular game and now we’ve got to do it again we lost a week ago. So every game is important.”
Elsewhere on Friday, the two conference leaders – the Oklahoma City Thunder in the West and the Cleveland Cavaliers – returned from the All-Star break with big wins. The Thunder beat the Utah Jazz 130-107 while the Cleveland Cavaliers overcame the New York Knicks 142-105.
