Warriors beat up on Knicks, show they may be turning the corner in new year

Kuminga's last days coincide with a resurgence from the 2nd unit.

With the Warriors officially moving into the mathematical second half of the 2025-26 season, something finally feels different in San Francisco. The team feels like they’re turning a corner, and they’re starting to achieve the kind of results that suggest it’s more than a feeling. The latest affirmation that things really have changed was a 126-113 victory over the Knicks on Thursday at Chase Center.

Earlier this season the Dubs would have been sunk by a team missing its best player. The flurry of turnovers they committed to start the game would have spiraled, the role players would have missed every shot and they never would have recovered from an early deficit.

And given the schedule from the start of the year, Golden State would have been playing this game on the road or on a back-to-back. They would have been without their most important bench pieces and Steve Kerr would have still been searching for rotational answers. Instead, they were hosting the New York Knicks coming off their own disappointment the previous night in Sacramento and missing Jalen Brunson due to a sprained ankle. While they did let old friend Mike Brown’s Knicks start ridiculously hot and storm out to a 17-point lead, this time Golden State rallied to save the game in the 1st quarter before finally pulling away down the stretch.

Admittedly things started in a familiar (negative) way. Steph was cold again after a frigid night against Portland, and he and Draymond compounded the issue with classic carelessness. In one early sequence Steph threw the ball behind his back into the backcourt for a violation and then threw it out of bounds, sandwiched around a miss from deep. Draymond then tried a needlessly aggressive pass to Gary Payton who wasn’t even open, and the team had four turnovers in the first eight minutes of the game. They were on pace for 24 on the night and it looked like it was going to be another maddening waste of a golden opportunity for Golden State.

On the broadcast, Stan Van Gundy provided some insight into just how lost the coaching staff is feeling to address the issue, relaying that Steve Kerr told him, “The more they talked about [the turnovers], the worse it got.” So according to Van Gundy, Kerr “and his staff just decided they’re just going to quit talking about it and it has gotten better.”

This method would appear to still be working. After that terribly familiar stretch to start the game, the Warriors took care of the ball the rest of the night and finished with only 12 giveaways, an unfortunately monumental feat.

On offense, the Knicks started 5/6 from three and seemed determined to make up for an embarrassing defeat to the Kings the night before, relieved of the pressure of a national TV game because they were missing their best player. Karl-Anthony Towns dominated on the glass to the tune of eight offensive rebounds and 20 boards in total, but Draymond held him in check offensively—when he wasn’t physically holding KAT’s leg to earn yet another flagrant. While that behavior is typical, a sign of the changing tides in the Bay was the Knicks’ shooting. New York missed 10 straight threes from midway in the 1st until three and a half minutes had elapsed to start the second half. It’s the kind of shooting luck that no team can count on, but every team needs once in a while, and only seems to appear if everything else is going right.

To some people, the story of this game—the reason that they won and the reason things feel different right now—was Jimmy Butler’s offensive aggression and game-high 32 points. Certainly Jimmy was crucial to the win; there is no way they do it without him. He used his physical strength (a unique attribute on this team) to snap a 10-0 run by the Knicks in the opening frame and reminded everyone that he’s the most athletic player still in the rotation with his finish on this vintage Kerr ATO play:

But the biggest difference from earlier in this season are the other members of the 2nd unit that play alongside Jimmy. De’Anthony Melton and Al Horford are skeleton keys that unlock the entire rest of the roster. They didn’t have as fruitful of an offensive evening as last time out, falling from a combined 29 points down to just 10. More bluntly, they were soundly outscored by Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski, who each started 4/4 from the field and finished with 21 points on 7-of-9 from three and a team-high +22 plus/minus respectively. But Moses and Podz aren’t going to shoot 70-plus percent every single night and the Dubs can’t count on them to hit shots with ridiculously high difficulty like these consistently (though Podz does seem to excel in late shot clock situations):

On the other hand, given good health, Melton and Horford’s contributions look extremely sustainable. Even when struggling a bit on the offensive end, Melton’s ball handling and finishing are so clearly light years ahead of the other role players. No one else is pulling out a Smitty in the lane and finishing over a shot blocker like this:

And when their bodies cooperate, Horford and Melton’s length and intelligence impact every single play on defense, and change the trajectory of the entire Warriors team. Even with losing the game-changing physical stature of Gui Santos to a sprained ankle in the 1st quarter and giving up 10 offensive rebounds in the 1st half, the Warriors did not feel overpowered by the Knicks’ size because Melton and Horford protected the rim so well.

Their presence on both ends led to the 1st quarter run which rescued the game and to the second half effort to create distance.

Right after halftime, the starters briefly gave up the lead that Jimmy and the bench had staked them after a back-and-forth 2nd period. But then, spurred by a couple of nice Quinten Post buckets, Steph rediscovering his range and Moody continuing to explode from deep, they mustered a quintessential third quarter run, stacking steals and stops and splashes to a double-digit lead going into the fourth.

Things got a little tighter as the pace of the game slowed to a crawl down the stretch, due to Draymond’s tripping flagrant and three consecutive video reviews. But this isn’t the same Dubs team from the first half of the season that was going to blow a winnable game. Their stars are still playing well, they’re getting reliable support from role players who have consistent roles, and they’re taking advantage of advantageous situations like this extended home stand.

Off the court, things may be different soon as well, with Jonathan Kuminga finally becoming trade-eligible and his agent officially demanding a trade. Four games above .500 for the first time all season, with the lowly Hornets coming to town next and the chance to improve their roster in the coming weeks, this is either the start of something new and better, or the most devastating rug pull the Warriors have executed yet.

Stay tuned to find out.