NBA Thursday: Warriors beat Spurs, become 2nd team ever with 70 wins

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

70: Golden State whooped the Spurs in Oakland to pick up win No. 70 and keep the dream of 73 alive. They’ll need to beat Memphis twice and become the first team to win in San Antonio this season to get there.

In those two recent losses, though, the reasons for Golden State’s failure seemed clear. Some of the players actively want that 73-win season that would be the best in NBA history, while others (and probably Steve Kerr) are ambivalent towards it. But regardless, everyone on the Warriors is wearied from the long season. With the playoffs looming -- but not quite here -- it’s hard to remained focus on games that feel more and more like slogging walk-throughs. It’s a challenge that many great teams face, and Golden State has done fine staving off those demons. Seeing Boston and Minnesota take them down, gunning at them as hard as they could, didn’t seem to be anything other than that.

If we don’t freak out about losses with this team anymore, then it doesn’t seem right to make a big deal out of wins. The Warriors won a regular season game against a team they will very likely face in the playoffs. That’s all the analysis needs to be, just about. Maybe Golden State, if healthy, will cut right through the Spurs like a Texas summer to a popsicle. More likely, the playoffs factor changes most everything. The Warriors will be the favorite, but that’s not because they won 112-101 on Thursday. It’s because that’s what the respective rosters dictate.

For a quarter, it really did look like the Spurs might have figured something out about Golden State. But it wasn’t long until the Warriors just started having fun again.

Kawhi Leonard led San Antonio with 23 points while Curry had 27 points. The Warriors and the Spurs face each other once more, on April 10, as San Antonio still has a 41-0 home record in play.

The 2015-16 Rockets were supposed to be good. Like, Could Maybe Absolutely Win A Title good!

Instead, they were bad. Like, fire the coach and miss the postseason bad.

With that said, if McDermott needs a career fallback, perhaps defensive end’s an option here? He’s 6’8 and 220 pounds so it would have to be a speed role. Hmm, not sure he’s speedy enough. Forget the tackle, let’s just stick to basketball here.

This is what happens if you don’t tackle the Heat, by the way:

The Golden State Warriors are 3-7 against the spread over their last 10 games with a 1-2 straight up record in their last three games. To avoid their third home loss of the season, the Warriors will need to defeat the San Antonio Spurs Thursday night.

Golden State is a 5.5-point betting favorite at home according to sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com. The Warriors are just 1-5 ATS in their last six games at home.