OAKLAND — A game after Steph Curry hit 13 three-pointers, the Warriors etched their name back into the NBA history books.
According to Elias Sports, Golden State became the first NBA team to have four separate players hit four three-pointers each, when they did so Wednesday against the Dallas Mavericks.
Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry all hit four threes. Talk about an even spread.
Durant ended with 28 points, Curry scored 24 points, Thompson posted 20 points (18 in the first quarter) and Green finished with 16 and 10 rebounds. The Warriors won 116-95 and led by as many as 33 in the first half.
“We’re getting better,” Durant said in the locker room afterwards. “We didn’t even notice (that stat) until after the game.”
It’s quite likely the Warriors will have three players with four three-pointers more often than not. It was Green who was the outlier on Wednesday. Kerr called Green a streaky shooter, but in the literal sense that you don’t know when he will take three-point attempts, not make them.
But Green was 3/19 so start the season from behind the arc coming into Wednesday. He’s been hard on himself.
“I think I have been a little hesitant, but you know the shots were open (tonight),” Green said. “But I haven’t been shooting well. It hasn’t even been feeling well in practice. I’ve constantly going to the gym and it’s been feeling better. One day I told myself regardless: shooting well or not, you’ve got to shoot the ball and shoot it with confidence. Tonight I did that.”
It was perhaps most encouraging to see Thompson explode for the first time all season. He came into the game averaging just 20.8 percent from downtown. Steve Kerr had jokingly been calling him Rip Hamilton because he was settling for so many 18-foot jumpers instead.
The Warriors were 17/33 (51.5 percent) total from three-point territory. They’ll be impossible to beat in the regular season when they are shooting this well.
