What We Learned When Steph Brought Buddy Warriors to Season Opener originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
BOX SCORE
After knocking off some opening night rust, the Warriors raced past the Portland Trail Blazers 139-104 at Moda Center on Wednesday night to kick off the 2024-2025 NBA season.
The Warriors couldn’t get a shot off early and were tied with the Blazers 21-21 entering the second quarter. Then Golden State found a new gear and couldn’t be slowed down. From the second quarter through the final buzzer, the Warriors outscored the Blazers 118-83. Their 35-point victory is the largest margin of victory for a season opener in franchise history.
Steph Curry fell one rebound short of recording his 11th career triple-double in the regular season. The Warriors’ superstar point guard finished with 17 points, 10 assists, nine rebounds and two steals. He had nine assists for his first turnover.
Curry sat the entire fourth quarter and was a plus-23 in 25 minutes.
Andrew Wiggins added 20 points and made four 3-pointers, starting next to Curry in the backcourt, but Buddy Hield was the biggest story of the night. Hield scored 22 points in 15 minutes off the bench in his Warriors regular-season debut. He shot 8 of 12 from the field, 5 of 7 from deep and grabbed five hustle rebounds.
Here are three takeaways from the Warriors’ dominant victory, which made a statement to start the regular season against the rebuilding Blazers.
First look at start five
An hour and a half before tipoff, the anticipation of who coach Steve Kerr’s starting five would be for the Warriors’ season opener finally came to an end. To begin his 11th season at the helm, Kerr opted to go big — by Warriors standards — with Curry, Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, Draymond Green and Trayce Jackson-Davis.
The idea is to have a long, athletic group that can shut down the opposition defensively while the offense revolves around Curry. And then the Warriors started the game ice cold by missing their first nine shots. Their first goal didn’t come until the 6:28 mark, making it a 12-7 game, when Curry found a sprinting Green for an easy layup.
Kerr’s starting five played just over five minutes in the first quarter and was minus-7. The Blazers outscored them 12-5, as the starters failed to make a shot in their first point together. They no longer played together in the second quarter, but were the first five on the floor to start the second half. Fittingly, Curry hit his first three-pointer of the game on the Warriors’ opening possession of the third quarter.
After ramping up defense and eventually falling shots, the Warriors’ starting five combined to be a plus-5 in the third quarter. In total, they played together for just over 11 minutes and were minus-2, with an overscore of 25-23. Every starter except Kuminga had a positive plus/minus.
Built by depth
Throughout training camp and the Warriors’ six preseason games, depth was a major storyline. The Warriors are deep, very deep. So deep that Kerr used eleven players in the first quarter, and by the start of the second quarter it was twelve. The order in which Kerr turned to his bench was also a bit surprising.
Hield, who Kerr considers his sixth man, was first off the bench as he replaced Kuminga. Gary Payton II replaced Jackson-Davis shortly after. The next two were Brandin Podziemski and Kevon Looney, followed later by De’Anthony Melton and then Kyle Anderson.
Moses Moody, who opened the second quarter, made it a 12-man rotation, leaving only Lindy Waters III and Gui Santos on the sidelines.
Going into halftime after a strong second quarter, the Warriors’ bench had outscored the Blazers’ reserves 27-11. Podziemski was plus-18, Hield was plus-13, Payton was plus-11 and Looney was plus-10. When the big win ended, Podziemski was a plus-34, Hield a plus-20, Payton a plus-26 and Looney a plus-13. The depth did its thing.
Both Waters and Santos played the final five minutes, and the Warriors’ bench defeated the Blazers 70-37.
Buddy buckets
Don’t call him the new Splash Brother. Don’t get cute and call him Splash Cousin. But there’s no denying Hield can get buckets quickly.
Hield hit not one, not two, not three but four 3-pointers in the first half, giving him 14 points through his first two quarters with the Warriors.
As of last season, this was what the Warriors envisioned with Klay Thompson. A flamethrower from the bench, dangerous enough to completely change a match. Only instead they added someone who is three years younger and never misses games.
In the Warriors’ perfect 6-0 preseason, Hield finished as the Warriors’ third-leading scorer with 12.2 points per game while shooting an absurd 48.7 percent on three-pointers. In his regular-season debut, he scored 22 points and made 71.4 percent of his seven three-point attempts. His five threes are tied for second-most all-time by a player in his Warriors debut.
Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast
