Warriors break Cleveland's heart again on first night of back-to-back
Dubs storm Cleveland without their stars and take a big win. Next game is in Chicago today at 4PM.
You remember the narratives, don’t you? The endless Cleveland chorus that used to echo through the league like a scratched vinyl. The Warriors only beat us because they had Kevin Durant. The Warriors needed four All-Stars. If we were healthy, everything would be different. Draymond plays dirty. The refs help them. The universe helps them. On and on, a catalog of grievances piled so high it blocked their view of the truth: Golden State was just better.
And last night in Cleveland, the basketball gods delivered a cruel little poem to prove the point.
It went like this:
Cleveland still chases ghosts, damned by the one ring won on shenanigans.
Warriors walked in shorthanded and still laid the smackdown, no panickin’.
No Steph, no Jimmy, no Draymond? No mercy
The dynasty ravages the Land again, Cavs fans oh so thirsty
Your Warriors walked into Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse without Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler, and Al Horford. They rolled out a lineup built from spare parts and hunger: Pat Spencer making his first NBA start, Buddy Hield in his first start of the season, Gui Santos, Quinten Post, and a rotation full of dudes most opposing fans probably couldn’t recognize. And that skeleton crew broke Cleveland’s heart again, 99–94, in front of 19,432 fans who thought this was finally the year the curse lifted.
Let…who know? Anyways.
Pat Spencer put up 19 points like he’d been saving them in a vault and hit three triples, all career highs. He played like a man who’d spent years watching Steph Curry weaponize joy and decided to activate a some of that glow. The audacity of it: to stroll into the building where LeBron (and the refs) once raised a banner over the Warriors, and dismantle the Cavs. And the Cavaliers rolled out a starting lineup with an assortment of first round draft picks, a few straight from the lottery. We’re talking All-Stars in Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland, a Defensive Player of the Year in Evan Mobley.
There’s no way they should have lost this game to the Dubs. This is what the Golden Empire’s championship DNA looks like. It doesn’t vanish when the All-Stars sit. It spreads like a quiet contagion of excellence.
The box score reads like an Aesop’s fable disguised as ink, a quiet parable about culture outlasting talent. Golden State opened the night shooting 4-for-23, one of the ugliest quarters any team has offered the league this year. Down 18–12, missing their four best players, looking every bit like a lineup built from hope and loose screws. But dynasties don’t blink at ugly starts. They don’t panic. They inhale, remember who they are, tug the smallest thread, and let the whole tapestry start unraveling in their hands.
Then they went 29-for-63 the rest of the way, slowly peeling Cleveland apart like it was a task they’d done a thousand times. Meanwhile Cleveland delivered a season-worst 34.6% from the field, bricking 10-of-42 threes, stacking another season-worst on top of that. They shot themselves out of a game they were supposed to win by double digits. That’s what happens when you run into a team that’s lived too long in winning moments folks, they tilt your confidence until you wobble, and then you wobble until you fall.
That second quarter deserves to be wrapped in gold foil and pinned somewhere sacred in Chase Center. Down 23–14, Kerr’s undermanned crew detonated a 27–8 run that felt like déjà vu and prophecy in the same breath. They went 8-of-10, Cleveland answered by going 3-for-27. Three. For. Twenty-seven!!!!!
Gui Santos tossed in 14 points, Quinten Post brought 12, and Buddy Hield added 13. None of these names are moving merchandise, but that’s the beauty of it. This team doesn’t run just an offense, it’s more like a worldview or a philosophy forged under lights hot enough to warp the unready. Coach Steve Kerr is showing that he can plug almost anyone into that current and eventually they start humming in tune.
Cleveland? Five losses in seven games. A promising season slipping through fingers they swear are steady. And haunting them, once again, the Warriors… even these Warriors. No excuses left! No KD safety valve to blame or Draymond theatrics to rage at or ref conspiracies.
This is legacy. Not just rings and parades and those afternoons when confetti sticks to your eyelashes. Legacy is the steel frame underneath the banner. The blueprint that holds even when you take out the pillars. The culture that teaches the eleventh man to stand there in the spotlight and not shrink. For Cleveland, this must’ve felt like a ghost stepping into their living room and grabbing the remote.
Pat Spencer will remember his first NBA start forever. Cleveland will too, just not in the way they’d hoped.
Chicago is next on the schedule. Then eventually the stars trickle back into uniform, and this whole bizarre stretch gets reduced to a footnote. But last night in Cleveland, the Warriors stretched their shadow across another arena, another fanbase, another hopeful contender. Reminding everyone why no matter the injuries, no matter the rotations, no matter the noise, they still know exactly where the soft spot in your ribs is. And they go for the kill.
Cleveland….THAT ONE WAS FOR YOUUUU!!!