And… it happened again.
After seeing their season start on the wrong foot, last year’s NBA Champions, the Golden State Warriors, opened their season against a much younger and quicker version of the team that took them out in the playoffs, the Philadelphia 76ers.
To say that these teams are vastly different would be an understatement, as the 76ers, with an up-and-coming core of young players in Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, Markelle Fultz and Dennis Smith Jr., are now the second youngest in the league. The Warriors, meanwhile, have added marquee players in DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Iguodala and to a lesser extent, Patrick McCaw.
Though the Warriors trailed through the first half, an inspired 18-3 run in the third quarter saw them take a lead that grew to 22 points before the end of the quarter. Things really clicked in the fourth quarter, when the Warriors added six more to take a 31-point lead, and cruised the rest of the way.
The game featured another game-high of 31 points from Golden State’s Kevin Durant, and 17 points and 15 rebounds from DeMarcus Cousins, who made his Warriors debut and scored a team-high plus-22 rating in just 25 minutes of action.
The win evened the home-and-home series with Philadelphia 1-1, giving the Warriors their first back-to-back regular season wins since December 2017.