With a spray of confetti but not a hint of champagne, the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night celebrated an achievement even their coach thought was impossible, surpassing the Chicago Bulls' all-time 72-10 record by winning for the 73rd time this season.
So now what?
Only 16 little victories remain.
Pushed against the proverbial wall after they lost to the Timberwolves at home late in the season, the Warriors needed to win their final four games to reach and surpass what Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the Bulls did 20 years ago.
They did so by winning barely at Memphis, convincingly at San Antonio and twice at home, including Wednesday's victory over the Grizzlies during which Golden State coach Steve Kerr — a member of both those Bulls and these Warriors — wore a pair of socks with Pippen's image on them.
Afterward, Warriors superstar Stephen Curry called the 73-victory season "an unbelievable accomplishment" and backcourt mate Klay Thompson termed the season's journey to get there "the best time of my life."
After a record 24-0 start and a season in which they never lost two games in a row, is it conceivable the playoffs and a championship seem anticlimactic?
Those 1995-96 Bulls lost only three playoff games — two of them to Seattle in the NBA Finals — on their way to turning their 72 victories into a championship trophy.
Kerr was a guard on that Bulls team. He has coached the Warriors to 67 and 73 victories these past two seasons, although he missed the first 43 games this season because of two back surgeries.
"I don't think they have to be two separate goals," Kerr said at Wednesday's postgame news conference. "Obviously with that Bulls team, we went on and won the championship. That's the No. 1 goal. We accomplished both back then, and that's what we're trying to do here. It was never a case of trying to achieve one at the expense of the other."
Kerr said he worried a week or two ago that his team might be extending itself too much. That's about the time they lost home games to Boston and the Wolves in a span of four days after they had won 54 consecutive regular-season games at Oracle Arena in the past 14-plus months.
Then they went and won those four games consecutively to end the season and reach a record Kerr once thought never would be beaten. The Warriors indeed beat it and yet were overshadowed by Kobe Bryant's 60-point outburst in his farewell performance 400 miles away in Los Angeles that night.
"I never would have guessed in a million years that record would be over," Kerr said. "I thought it was like DiMaggio's hit streak [Joe DiMaggio's major league record 56-game hit streak in 1941]. I was wrong, but I will say the same thing now that I said 20 years ago. I don't think this will ever be broken. Somebody has to go 74-8. I don't see it, and I hope our fans aren't expecting it next year."
The Warriors face Houston — the team they beat in last year's Western Conference finals — in a first-round series starting Saturday afternoon in Oakland, Calif.
"It was fantastic our guys followed through and got it done and set the record," Kerr said. "No matter what happens, this has been an incredible season. But it obviously takes on a different meaning if we go on and win the title. That's our focus now."
Before the Wolves beat his team nearly two weeks ago, Kerr said the best way to prepare for the playoffs was to play like they were already there in the season's final games. Needing to win out to get the record, that's the way his team played.
Thompson said he and his teammates now are playoff-tested, not overextended.
"We got everybody's best shot every night," Thompson told reporters after Wednesday's game. "We're prepared for whatever we face. We know the gantlet. We know how hard it's going to be. This regular season did prepare us. We know what we have to do to win. I'm going to look back on this and think of it as the best time of my life. Not many people get to experience it. I'm really grateful for it."
The Warriors enter the playoffs after beating Memphis Wednesday in a game when Curry surpassed 400 three-pointers by making 10 of them when he needed eight to reach a mark thought unimaginable. In doing so, he scored 46 points and didn't play in the fourth quarter.
"I'd be lying if I told you I ever thought about 400," Curry told NBA TV Wednesday. "That's crazy."
The Warriors went back to work Friday, holding their first and only practice before Saturday's playoff opener. A year after they won the title, the Warriors carry the 73-victory record with them, a distinction Kerr after Friday's practice refused to consider any kind of burden.
"That just goes with the territory," he told reporters when asked about any pressure he or his team might feel. "We're defending champs, so when you're the favorite it's a little different dynamic. Last year, even though we won 67 games and we were the No. 1 seed, people still wondered if we could get it done. So it's a different feel, a different dynamic. We've still got to win 16 games. It doesn't matter if it's a different kind of pressure or not. Everybody's got pressure."
A variety of sources were used for this report.
