After winning on the road trip, the “Warriors” are prepared for “drive time.”

Warriors prepared for upcoming break after victorious road trip originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Four days after their statement win against the defending champion Celtics in Boston, the Warriors accomplished an even more significant feat:

A “statement” road trip.

Which happens to be peppered with fortuitous timing.

Their 127-116 victory over the Thunder on Sunday in Oklahoma City capped a fabulous 10-day season that signaled to the NBA that the Warriors are cold-eyed and serious about flying high. They’re not just about challenging the league’s elite. They want to join her.

They left the Bay Area on November 1 for their most impressive game of the season, facing the strong Houston Rockets and the weak Washington Wizards before falling to three legitimate ones with the defending champion Celtics, the undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers and the 8-1 Thunder Title contenders met.

Winning three out of five would have been a good trip. Winning all five games would have been enough for the Warriors to fly home without having to board a jet. Their 4-1 record, despite an ugly loss to the Cavaliers, is vindication.

“A heck of a trip,” coach Steve Kerr told reporters at the Paycom Center. “Great start to the season, we won eight of our first ten, including a couple of away wins against two of the best teams in the league. I feel like our team is doing well.

“But this is just the beginning of a long season. We have to keep working.”

The Warriors recognize that they are far from perfect, with one flaw being a perplexing tendency to outsmart big leads. It resurfaced as the 30-point lead dwindled to six in the final seconds of the third quarter with 4:46 left.

Stephen Curry secured the win and put the Thunder to sleep by blasting them with eight of his game-high 36 points in the final 3:23, including a dagger 3-ball that gave them the lead with 1:13 left Final increased to 10.

“These two evenings are good for us to see what we are doing wrong by dropping clues,” Kerr said. “On the other hand, it’s the modern NBA. No lead is safe. … It just feels like this is the modern NBA.

“But we had turnovers in both games that allowed both Houston and OKC to get back into the game, and that’s probably where we can clean up some things.”

The Warriors did enough to move into a virtual tie for first place in the Western Conference with OKC and the Phoenix Suns – all with a record of 8-2. The Warriors were in second place when they left town 10 days ago, but they had not been tested. Now that they’ve proven themselves, they come home with a record unmatched by any team in the conference.

Looking out West suggests this is a good time for Golden State to stake its claim and continue to climb as injuries plague much of the conference.

In the win over OKC, the Warriors took full advantage of losing Thunder center Chet Holmgren, who suffered a hip injury in the first quarter. He was supported off the floor and Oklahoma announced after the game that Holmgren had suffered a fractured right iliac wing and would be reevaluated in eight to 10 weeks.

The Suns say star forward Kevin Durant (calf strain) will be out at least through Thanksgiving week. The fourth-place Denver Nuggets will be without power forward Aaron Gordon for at least two weeks due to a strained right calf. The fifth-ranked Memphis Grizzlies have three starters — Ja Morant, Desmond Bane and Marcus Smart — on week-to-week status.

These wounded teams will eventually get their stars back. But the Warriors need to know it’s time to get going. Few things in the NBA are better for a team’s psyche than going on a successful road trip, although there is plenty of room for improvement.

“You always have to have perspective in this league because it’s so hard to win,” Curry said on NBC Sports Bay Area’s “Warriors Postgame Live.” “If you get on the plane at SFO 10 or 11 days ago and say we’re 4-1, you take that all day long. The Cleveland game was a tough pill to swallow.

“But our resilience to bounce back and play against a very strong OKC team in their construction and get a win like this on the way home shows what we are building.”

Next up are Klay Thompson and the Dallas Mavericks, who are in 11th place. They’re also hurt, without starting forward PJ Washington and key rotation player Dereck Lively during their loss at Denver on Sunday.

Good health is always temporary. Can change in an instant. The Warriors are in good mental and physical shape and need to use that to their advantage.

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