Winning Warriors at home in road jerseys

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Was watching the Warriors. You know, the basketball team that keeps trying all those little tricks, like wearing road uniforms at home to keep the opposition off balance and — certainly — to hope the fans buy another set of jerseys or T-shirts.

There were the Dubs on Saturday night in their slate, sleeved tops, and the Minnesota Timberwolves in white, as if Oracle Arena had been moved to Minneapolis. Had me fooled for a while.

Hey, that wasn’t Steph Curry throwing them up from the outside, was it? Not certain. Time to look at the scoreboard.

No fooling there. Another Warriors victory. Eleven in a row, this one by a score of 115-102. The Dubs are now 15-2. When do the playoffs start?

The idea that acquiring Kevin Durant as a free agent would make the visiting — sorry, dark jerseys, home team — virtually unbeatable is making a great deal of sense, as Durant, Curry, Klay Thompson and the rest are, well, virtually unbeatable. 

And Saturday they won without Draymond Green, out with a sore ankle. Maybe Dray, one of the NBA’s better defensive players — yes, a bit restrained with the accolades, as it’s still only November — would have kept Zach Levine from scoring 31 or Karl-Anthony Towns from getting 18, but that’s academic.

As it was, the Warriors’ Big Three indeed were a big three. Curry with 34 points, Durant with 28, Thompson with 29. And as Dubs coach Steve Kerr pointed out about the points, they came from inside as opposed to outside. Only 22 three-point attempts, 11 of those successful.

“We missed Dray,” said Thompson, “missed his defense and passing.”

And his exhorting and shouting. “The rest of us had to raise our voices to make up for it,” said Thompson. Most likely he was serious, but with the Warriors one never is quite sure how to take a comment.

They are a fun bunch, and for good reason. They’ve got the routine down, almost to perfection.

A quick start, a minor stumble, a halftime lead and then a victory, whatever the spread. But fans never get bored by wins. Neither do coaches or players.

Maybe the league ought to force the Warriors to sit out a starter every game until January. With Green missing, Kevon Looney, the team’s first-round draft pick in the championship year of 2015, started at what used to be known as power forward but is now called the No. 4.  

“Our spacing was very different,” said Kerr, if the results are not. Looney had six points and two rebounds. “I thought he played well,” said Kerr. Yes, just plug in another star and keep the machine running.

Then again, for the first time in 11 games, they failed to record 30 assists, getting only 25. Horrors!

Kerr is thinking about the future, the postseason, as are most of us. “We are interested in the process, and what we are doing,” he said when asked if any win, by one point or 20 points, was equally satisfying.

“We know, when games in the spring come, what it takes. We’ve been there the last two years and succeeded once and failed last year ultimately. We felt what the games are like in the playoffs, so you try to prepare for that in the regular season.

“You focus on the process. Try and win the game, but focus on the things that you know you have to get better at.”

Not much, one presumes, especially now that Durant is part of that process.

“The only thing we told him,” said Kerr about Durant, “was that he was going to guard Towns. We knew Looney could do a good job, and he would start on hm. But we told Kevin (Durant) he would have some minutes on Towns. I didn’t tell him anything else. He knows the game. I thought he was spectacular.”

No matter what color the jersey.