The golden state warriors found their first win of the season on monday night, and it did not come from the places you'd expect.
Yaxel Lendeborg dropped 31 points and grabbed 12 rebounds as the warriors ran past the denver nuggets, 134 to 114. it was golden state's fourth game of the season. it was their first win.
That is the headline. but the shape of it matters more than the final score.
Golden state opened the year 0 and 3. three losses to start a season is the kind of thing that gets a fan base checking the schedule for relief, and instead they got denver, a team riding its own three game skid into the arena. something had to give.
Lendeborg gave it. a 31 and 12 line is the kind of production that would be a career night for most rotation players in this league, and he put it up against a nuggets team that came in desperate to stop the bleeding themselves.
what the box score says about golden state right now
A team that starts 0 and 3 is going to hear every version of the same question: is this early noise, or is this who they are. one blowout win over a struggling denver club does not settle that argument. but it does buy golden state something it did not have monday morning, which is a data point that says the roster can still put a complete 48 minutes together when somebody steps up who is not supposed to be the headline.
That is the real story here. not that the warriors won, but who won it for them. golden state has carried star power at the top of the roster for most of a decade now. a 31 point, 12 rebound game from a name like Lendeborg is the kind of thing that changes a rotation conversation fast, whether or not it changes the win column again right away.
For denver, this one stings on a different level. a team already sliding into game three of a bad stretch does not need to get run off the floor by 20, and they did. the schedule does not wait for anybody to fix things, either. denver turns around and hosts new orleans next, a pelicans team that opened the season 0 and 3 itself, which tells you both clubs have real business to settle before this month is out.
what comes next for both teams
Golden state travels to minnesota next, into a building where anthony edwards just dropped 47 points on somebody else. that is not a soft landing spot off one good night. the warriors will find out fast whether monday was a turning point or a single good chapter in a rough opening stretch.
Denver gets new orleans, a team that has not won yet either, and that is as close to a get right spot as the schedule offers this early. how the nuggets respond off a bad loss says more about their season than the loss itself did.
Four games in, nothing is settled for either club. but golden state has one thing it didn't have monday morning: proof the pieces around the stars can still go off when the moment calls for it.
