The Golden State Warriors more or less invented the modern NBA's math problem. They take and make a lot of 3s, which are worth more than 2s, and over time, that extra point becomes too much to keep up with. It's a simple concept, which is why the rest of the league has caught up, and now you don't often see these giant 3-point disparities.
Saturday night was an outlier in this regard. In a 120-101 victory over the Rockets, the Warriors made 25 3-pointers, just four shy of the tying Milwaukee's NBA record. The Rockets made three. Do the math and Golden State outscored Houston 75-9 from beyond the arc.
It's actually astonishing that the Rockets only lost the game by 19. They kept it reasonably close by outscoring the Warriors 18-5 at the free-throw line and 74-40 from two-point range. Those are big disparities in themselves, but again, the power of the 3 becomes lethal in volume.
From the 6:02 mark of the third quarter to the 3:07 mark of the fourth quarter, a span of 15 game minutes, the Warriors didn't make a single two-pointer. It was all 3s. Ten of them, to be exact. It would've been 11, but Andrew Wiggins had a toe on the line for a 22-foot jumper to end the streak.
The Warriors, who have made at least 20 3-pointers in four of their past five games, are the first team to reach 400 made 3s for the season. Wiggins, who is playing better this season than he did last season when he was an All-Star starter, was scorching hot on Saturday hitting eight (tying a career high) of his 10 3-pointers for a season-high 36 points. Wiggins is now shooting just under 45 percent from 3 for the season. It continues to be incredible what kind of player this guy has turned into with the Warriors.
Stephen Curry tossed in eight 3s of his own on Saturday. That makes Curry and Wiggins the third teammates in history -- joining Zach LaVine and Coby White (2021) and Donovan Mitchell and Kevin Love (earlier this season) -- to each record at least eight 3s in the same game, and the first Warriors duo to do so.
From @ESPNStatsInfo: Curry and Wiggins are the third pair of teammates to each make eight 3-pointers in the same game in NBA history. Almost surprisingly, they are the first pair to do this in Warriors history.
— Kendra Andrews (@kendra__andrews) December 4, 2022
It's hard to fathom that any Warriors record involving 3-pointers wouldn't belong to the Splash Brothers, but here we are. Golden State has four bonafide flamethrowers (yes, Klay Thompson is still a 3-point god, and I continue to believe he'll be back to his old form at some point). Jordan Poole added five 3s on Saturday and is now 12 for his past 21 from deep.
With the win, the Warriors improved to 13-11 on the season. They will wrap up a three-game homestand on Monday against the Pacers.
