The Warriors has lost the game against Minnesota and earlier before that against the Boston Celtics. The run towards breaking the Chicago Bulls record of 72 wins was not looking good. Was the regular season run finally caught up with the Warriors? Were they tired?
Nonetheless, the game against the Grizzlies was supposed to be an easy one for the Warriors as the Memphis Grizzlies is hanging on at the lower end of the playoff picture, they haven’t been winning in their last 10 games and two of their star players Mike Conley and Marc Gasol are out because of injuries. Apparently, the Grizzlies have a mission of making the Warriors work very hard and deny them of breaking the 72-win regular season. For a moment there Memphis looks like it will be upsetting the Warriors as they led by ten points with the just 6 minutes left. For the Warriors, this is the game they need to breathe life to their run and give them the confidence to finally break the home winning streak of the San Antonio Spurs.
Draymond Green’s excellent all-around play helped them push forward to win their 71st game on the slimmest of margin 100-99. 71 wins in a single regular season is a lot and most teams can only dream of reaching this milestone.
This was a hard fought game as the Warriors had to climb back from 10 points in the last 6 minutes and were still 5 points down in the last 2 minutes and 48 seconds in the game. The game winning shot was a follow-up tip-in by Draymond Green off a Stephen Curry layup miss while having 4 Grizzlies defending for a defensive rebound. On the next play, Draymond forced Randolph to shoot an airball.
Grizzlies still had the opportunity to deliver a heart-breaking upset as Lance Stephenson had two shot attempts in the last 10 seconds, the final shot came at .8 seconds but couldn’t deliver the points.
Even when Memphis seemed to be in control of the remainder of the 4th quarter, the Warriors required the contribution from four players – three points from Curry, Igoudala, a driving two points by Green, another three on the top right key by Harrison Barnes, and the go ahead two points while having four Grizzlies on the defensive end.
When the Buzzer sounded, the Warriors won their 71st game and 33rd road game, an achievement that puts them in the history books only occupied by the Chicago Bulls 1991-1996.
