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The best and biggest thing that happened to the Warriors on Thursday felt perfectly inevitable — but they never had tried it before or actually even really considered it.

Not in practices. Definitely not in Game 2 of the regular season.

“No,” Steve Kerr said with a chuckle about any detailed plans for the dynamic and up-sized lineup that dragged the Nuggets into overtime and then won it for the Warriors. “We never even talked about that combination until tonight.”

The combination: Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler, Al Horford, and Jonathan Kuminga — thrown together by emergency to get as many big and athletic bodies on the floor to try to slow down Aaron Gordon (on his way to a 50-point night).

The details: On the suggestion of assistants Terry Stotts and Chris DeMarco, Kerr subbed Green back into the game to join the other four with 3:50 left in the fourth with the Warriors trailing 116-109.

From there, the Warriors outscored the Nuggets 11-4 in regulation (with Curry scoring all 11) then 17-11 in overtime (with Curry, Butler, and Horford all making 3s), for a cumulative 28-15 run and 137-131 victory in their home opener.

Practically, this lifted the Warriors to 2-0 with both victories coming against key conference rivals before Friday’s game in Portland on a rough back-to-back.

Symbolically, this was a bit of a lightning-bolt moment for the Warriors and for everybody else in the league tuning in.

Did the Warriors just unveil a new dimension of themselves?

“[Stotts and DeMarco] just thought with the way Steph was going with Jimmy out there, we were going to score,” Kerr said. “That was my biggest concern — could we execute?

“They just reminded me that we have Steph and Jimmy, and they’ll find a way to score. And they did. And it was fantastic to watch the defense with that kind of size and length.”

Of course, the reasons they never considered this group — it only works if Curry is going nuclear, if Kuminga continues to play as efficiently as he has to start the season, and if Horford is incredibly active — will limit the number of times the Warriors can successfully go back to it. This probably isn’t a lineup that would flourish, say, against great defensive teams like Oklahoma City or Houston.

But that specificity is also part of a larger point. The Warriors have a more complete roster now than they’ve had since they barreled to the 2021-22 championship. When you add in this creative coaching staff and Curry’s full engine power, suddenly they can mix and match for almost any situation.

And OK, there definitely was one major Warrior figure who was contemplating this five-man group joining forces in whatever circumstance.

“I did think that was a possibility to be a closing lineup,” Green said. “Or a starting lineup. Or a middle-of-the-game lineup.”

It’s late October, but the Warriors maneuvered and scrambled to keep up with and then take down Gordon and Nikola Jokic like it was a turning point in a mid-May series.

Which is a mode, we know, that the Warriors love.

“It’s kind of like a playoff-type vibe, where somebody has an out-of-body experience and you dig deep and steal one, pretty much,” Curry said. “That says a lot about what we’re trying to do.”

Unspoken point: The Warriors have a guy whose own out-of-body experiences, even at 37 years old, aren’t actually too uncommon. Curry had 42 points on Thursday and made it look like he could keep doing stuff like this for another five or 50 years.

Curry also wisely made sure to tamp down any exaggerated thoughts about what getting to 2-0 means for this team. The Warriors said and felt some of those elevated things after their 12-3 start last season and were burned when most of it came crashing to earth soon afterward.

But that tumble led to the acquisition of Butler last February. And the Warriors’ late-season surge. And Curry rising, as always, to meet the moment.

Again, there will assuredly be many nights — on the way to the playoffs and, if they get there, in those tight series — when Horford or Kuminga or both aren’t in the closing lineup. Brandin Podziemski definitely will be out there many times, especially against tougher defenses. So will Moses Moody when he’s 100%. Buddy Hield obviously closed some huge playoff games last season. There will be injuries. There will be load management.

Also, Kuminga has been great so far this season, which might lead to him getting a fixed spot in this rotation or might frustrate him if he doesn’t get that role permanently. Which might lead to him getting traded in a few months — and that would have its own ripple effects.

Yes, it’s early. Things can change and almost always do. But it’s just good for the Warriors to have all these significant options and to feel what it’s like to deploy them in pressure situations.

Their sprint to the playoffs last season was invigorating, but it was also, by necessity, a little monochromatic. It was Curry, Butler, Green, Moody, and Podziesmki, basically just that unit winning all those games down the stretch; it worked while it worked, but when Curry got hurt in the second round, it was completely over.

Obviously, if Curry gets hurt again in the postseason, the Warriors won’t be going much further. But they’ve absolutely got more around him this season than they’ve had for a few years.

That’s because of Horford, probably their most versatile center of this era whose initials aren’t “DG.” It’s because Kuminga is fitting in so well alongside Butler and Green in the middle spaces of the floor. It’s because Curry by himself takes care of most offensive concerns, which allowed the Warriors to allocate every other resource to stopping Gordon, Jokic, and Jamal Murray on Wednesday.

“For a championship-type team like [the Nuggets] 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 you still win — that says a lot about where we’re at right now,” Curry said. “But it also says we’ve got a lot of work to do to keep doubling down, just finding a way to win no matter what the situation is.”

It got loud at Chase Center on Thursday, especially when Curry asked for the noise. It got very strategic. It felt important. It seemed like the new blueprint for something.

This wasn’t the playoffs, but it was clearly a Warriors team that is figuring out how it can get there — and flourish there.