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The ball hanging in the air off Steph Curry’s fingertips in crunchtime is sport in its purest element. It’s Simone Biles testing the bounds of gravity. It’s a Shohei Ohtani home run out of Dodger Stadium or a slow Tiger Woods walk up 18 at Augusta. 

Inevitable yet shocking, Curry’s 3-pointers never get old. At least they haven’t in the past 17 years. 

In the Warriors’ home opener Thursday night, Curry delivered two of those singular moments in the final 90 seconds of regulation. Each tied the game and brought the fans in the Chase Center to euphoria; they hugged each other and thought to themselves, “How is this guy still doing this?” 

Curry’s second clutch three sent the game into overtime, where he led Golden State to a 137-131 win with 42 points. It was an instant classic, and the 37-year-old supernova was at the center of it. 

Late October games tend to be forgettable, but not this one. The Nuggets’ Aaron Gordon, a San Jose native, went 10-for-11 from behind the arc for a career-high 50 points. Each team played with a level of sophistication and confidence that only comes with championship continuity; the Chase Center court held a combined five MVPs and 16 rings. There were eight lead changes and 10 ties, almost all of which came in the last two minutes of regulation and overtime. 

There was Nikola Jokic, the game’s greatest player, and Curry, its greatest showman. After Jimmy Butler hit the game-sealing three, Curry broke out his signature “night-night” celebration, almost begging Butler to join him. Curry shimmied after one of his heart-stopping late triples and signaled toward Denver’s bench to take a timeout (head coach David Adelman did, in fact, call a timeout) after another. 

To win a game like this, against an opponent like Denver, is a signal that the Warriors are serious. They’re serious about banking wins early in the season, about their stature among the toughest opponents in the league, about doing whatever is necessary to get Curry back on to the brightest stages. 

“To be a part of that, it’s pretty special playing these types of games,” new center Al Horford said postgame. “Denver’s a great team, one of the best teams in our league. For us to be able to find a way to win that is pretty special.” 

Every Warrior who took the podium spoke of Denver with reverence. Jokic, who led the Nuggets to the 2023 NBA championship, has won three of the past five MVP awards. Last year, even with a compromised Gordon, the Nuggets took the eventual champion Thunder to seven games in the playoffs. 

Gordon is clearly recovered from the Grade 2 hamstring strain he battled through in the playoffs. He hit his first eight 3-pointers to start Thursday’s game, lighting up a Warriors defense keyed in on Jokic and Jamal Murray. 

“He played out of his mind,” Curry said of Gordon. “But for a championship-type team like they are — a team that has a lot of continuity from year to year — then you have a guy like that play the way he did, and we still win, that says a lot about where we’re at right now. But it also says we’ve got a lot of work to do, to keep doubling down on just finding a way to win no matter what the situation is.” 

Gordon, as he often is, was the beneficiary of Denver’s beautiful basketball ecosystem. Jokic and the Nuggets constantly generate open shots, leveraging their superstar’s elite playmaking with the threat of his dominant scoring to put defenses in a bind. 

He and Murray, teammates for nine years now, have an innate on-court bond that only comes with years and years of reps. Curry and Draymond Green know a thing or two about that. 

Each team’s impressive execution was a reminder that this game was a counterpunch to the current era of player movement. Building chemistry matters. Going through championship runs together matters. Ask Curry, Green, or Gary Payton II. Ask Jokic, Murray, Gordon, Christian Braun, or Bruce Brown. 

It was only the second game of the season — the first for the Nuggets — and each team executed like it was the NBA Finals. The only way that’s possible is championship DNA. 

The Warriors scored the first 10 points but fell behind by double digits as Gordon caught fire. They were only able to remain close by turning the ball over just eight times. 

Rookie Will Richard made several energy plays in his earned fourth-quarter minutes to keep the Warriors close. On one, he caught a pass at the foul line in the short roll before finding Jonathan Kuminga for a reverse, and-1 dunk. 

Butler subbed out Richard eventually, and the Warriors went with a supersized unit to close the game: Curry, Butler, Kuminga, Green, and Horford. 

Assistant coaches Terry Stotts and Chris DeMarco suggested the Warriors go to that combination even though they’d never played together — not even in practice. With more size, the Warriors could throw bigger bodies at Gordon. And with two centers, they could put Green on Murray and Horford on Jokic, thereby switching pick-and-roll actions. 

The only way it would work on offense in the halfcourt with such minimal spacing, though, was if Curry could carry the team. And he was in that mode on Thursday.

After getting to the foul line with two minutes left, Curry walked away from the stripe to egg on the crowd. MVP chants followed as he reached 29 points. 

“Yeah, he loves the moment,” Green said of Curry. “That’s just who he’s been since I’ve known him. The bigger the moment, the more he rises. He’s this quiet guy. You all know Steph, how he is. He loves a show. Any time there’s a show to put on, he’s going to do it.” 

Curry poured in 13 more points over the next seven game minutes. 

With the score stuck within one possession, the Warriors flattened their players out along the baseline and let Curry and Green run high pick-and-roll in the middle of the floor. Over and over, it worked. 

Until overtime, when Denver adjusted its defensive coverage. The Warriors countered by running more actions through Butler, continuing the chess match. 

This early in the season is usually checkers. 

Butler found Horford for a three in the corner, then Green for a layup after displaying patience in the paint. And with 41 seconds left, he canned the straightaway 3-pointer to put the Warriors up by two possessions. 

That’s when Curry, always at the center of the action, gave him the “night-night” treatment.

“Just team basketball, man,” Curry said. “The reason he got that shot is because we’d been really methodical, possession after possession. They ran out of stuff to guard.” 

If the Warriors are going to accomplish their goals and escape the play-in round this year, they’ll need wins like Thursday’s. Beating up on lottery teams is productive — and they’ll need those too, to be sure — but holding court against the best of the West is the only path to true contention. 

The thrilling victory was a sign that the Warriors are on their way. If it wasn’t the second game of the season, it’d be the type of game all over a championship DVD. 

But the Warriors have 80 more. That’s a lot of time for more Curry marvels.

“You understand and don’t get too ahead of yourself,” Curry said. “But building blocks on understanding how to win.”