Warrior Wonder: The team’s stars split the accolades in their win against the T’Wolves

The Golden State Warriors lead the Minnesota Timberwolves wire-to-wire for a 116-108 win behind a barrage of napalm from behind the 3-point line. With Draymond Green back with the team after his injury stint, every one of the Warrior’s stars showed up to collectively put away the T’Wolves, despite their numerous bids to comeback.

Let’s take a look into which of the stars edged out the rest for our Warrior Wonder award.

Warrior Wonder Candidates

Stephen Curry

Since returning to the team, Curry has picked up exactly where he left off before his injury, averaging 30 points and 5 treys a game on an insane 70 TS%, over the Warrior’s 4 game road trip.

Let’s just say he hardly skipped a beat against Minnesota, despite a relatively quiet first half where he scored 13 points.

With the Timberwolves refusing to fade away behind the surprising resurgence of Derrick Rose and strong play of Karl-Anthony Towns, Curry did what he tends to do so often, stopped playing with his food, licked his chops, and deep-fried his opponent to the tune of 14 points in the 3rd quarter.

He’d finish with a game-high 38 points, 7 treys, 6 assists, and 7 rebounds.

Kevin Durant

As it has been over the past two seasons, where Curry embodies the detonation power of an atom-bomb on the court, Durant provides an alternative but equally-deadly approach with his surgical mid-range game. The synchronization of their powers is what creates the world-ending outlook the media and other teams love to cry over.

Durant has had a slow start to the season from behind the 3-point line, converting only 34.6% of his looks, which would be his lowest percentage since his rookie year.

Some of this can be attributed to the time Curry and Green missed on the court, which put Durant in the position to try to take over in ways that resulted in tougher contested shots. But even after Curry’s return, Durant still only managed to hit 30% of his treys over their road trip.

But he found some momentum against the T’Wolves, where he knocked down 4-of-7 from deep in a solid all-around game of 22 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 steals.

Draymond Green

The man best described as the heartbeat of the team found his way back onto the court against the T’Wolves and instantly showed what a difference the Warriors look like when he’s in the lineup.

From scarfing down rebounds and pushing the ball up the court for transition buckets, to directing the team and finding the open man on numerous drive-and-kicks (see Durant video above), the Warriors played more up-tempo than they had been while Green had been out.

His conditioning looked like it might take a few games before he’s able to run the entire game at full-speed, but even with an 85% Draymond, the team is noticeably better.

Green ended up with a very typical Draymond-esque stat-line with 7 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists.

Klay Thompson

Thompson had a relatively off-night for his standards despite collecting 22 points. He started the game off 1-of-5 from the field and never completely put it together, shooting a rather inefficient 8-of-22 for the game.

However, although he never managed to get over the hump, Thompson proved why that saying of “shooters got to shoot” carries some weight — as he hit a handful of timely shots to curb any sort of momentum the T’Wolves tried to build, including this buzzer-beater at the half.

It’s difficult to say who deserves the Warrior Wonder award outright, as each one of these guys deserves credit in the Warrior’s win over the T’Wolves last night.

My pick would be Curry or Green for the sole fact that those two continue to show how much they transform the identity of this team when they step foot on the court.

Honorable Mention

Jonas Jerebko scored 10 points for his fourth straight game of double-digit scoring. He also nabbed 8 rebounds and 5 assists. The Swedish Larry Bird continues to be the team’s best offseason move through the first third of the season.