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SAN ANTONIO — It was championship DNA versus a green team on the rise. The game-breaking giant-slayer of the past decade against an alien primed to invade the league for the next one. Grit and savvy at odds with freaky athleticism. 

For two games, the Warriors and Spurs opened a kaleidoscope into the past, present, and future. Through the looking glass, the basketball was beautiful. 

Steph Curry followed up his 46-point masterpiece with an electric 49-point barrage, including 31 in the second half and the go-ahead foul shots. The titanic Victor Wembanyama (26 points, 12 rebounds, 3 blocks) mucked up just about everything in the paint and nearly took over the game, but De’Aaron Fox’s potential game-winning 18-footer as time expired rimmed out. 

The Warriors won the first game Wednesday, 125-120, and then took Friday night’s heart-stopping thriller, 109-108. The latter blockbuster featured 13 lead changes, 13 ties, and a plethora of jaw-dropping moments. 

Both felt like playoff games, especially Friday’s NBA Cup group play matchup. And if these two teams meet again in April, no one would be upset. Curry and Wembanyama on any stage, in any locale — France, Texas, the Bay — is must-see theater. 

“He’s not bad,” head coach Steve Kerr joked of Curry postgame. “Wemby’s not bad either. What a battle between a guy who’s been doing this for a long time and continues to amaze at 37 and a young guy over there. He just destroys everything defensively, it’s just so hard to get an easy basket. Every time you think you’re free, he just comes out of nowhere and blocks a shot or gets in the way. That was an incredible basketball game.” 

The teams traded leads three times in the final 3:37, the veteran Warriors executing on just a slightly higher plane than San Antonio. When Curry stepped to the foul line with 6.4 seconds left, Wembanyama waved on a feverish Frost Bank Center crowd. Curry did, too, smiling and chewing his mouth guard after tying the game with his first attempt. 

Less than 30 seconds earlier, Wembanyama made what may have been his signature play of his young career had the Spurs escaped with a win. Curry outran the Spurs’ defense in transition with Jimmy Butler flanking him on his right, with just Wembanyama between them and the rim. Curry dished a slick behind-the-back pass to Butler, but Wembanyama recovered to swat Butler’s layup clean out of the air. 

Flashback to the 2016 NBA Finals.

Only Wembanyama was capable of that play. And it wasn’t his only singular, eye-popping moment. 

Earlier in the game, the center picked up his dribble at the elbow. With nowhere to go, he pivoted around Moses Moody, lobbed a pass to himself off the glass, and stuffed an alley-oop in. 

He scored 26 points with all-world defender Draymond Green draped all over him for the second straight game, making him work for every catch, every inch, every shot. Perhaps the most electric play of the night was when the Spurs lobbed an alley oop from a baseline out of bounds set way up high to Wembanyama. He’d been hand-fighting with Green so much seconds prior, the officials had to break them up. But he got free from Green’s clutches, rose up to the ball where only he could get it, and slammed it on Green’s head. 

Green and Wembanyama locked jaws after the play, two fiery competitors who didn’t even realize in the moment that the dunk was waved off for a foul on Green before the shot. 

Curry, as he tends to do, had his own one-of-a-kind sequences. 

In a third-quarter flurry, he stepped back on Wembanyama before launching a rainbow 3-pointer. While the ball still floated in the air, Curry stared down the 7-foot-4 France native. 

Flashback to the Paris Olympics.

Curry poured in 18 points in the third quarter, including four 3s. His mouth was agape after a circus and-1 runner from the free-throw line and he kissed a separate finger roll high off the glass to narrowly avoid a Wembanyama rejection. 

“I think he’s fully healthy now, he ain’t sick anymore,” Gary Payton II said postgame. 

Curry was so hot in the third quarter, Kerr rode him the entire period instead of sticking to his traditional substitution pattern. And then in the fourth, sensing the game was within reach, Kerr tapped Curry back in with eight minutes left.

Shortly after, Curry drilled a step-back triple over Jeremy Sochan. On his way back on defense, he signaled his hands in a “2-3" motion, paying homage to Michael Jordan.

Why MJ? That bucket put Curry over the 40-point mark, tying him with His Airness for the most 40-point games after turning 30 (44). 

The last time Curry dropped at least 40 points in consecutive games before this week was in 2022. 

“That’s pretty cool, just from an individual accomplishment perspective,” Curry said. “To be in that type of company. Longevity is something I pride myself on, so that was pretty cool.” 

After Curry’s go-ahead foul shots, the Spurs had a chance to win with the final possession. Everyone in the building assumed San Antonio would put the ball in Wembanyama’s hands. Instead, the Spurs ran a guard-to-guard high pick-and-roll and let point guard De’Aaron Fox go to work on Payton — who played his second straight excellent game after being out of the rotation at times for the first three weeks. 

Payton prevented Fox from getting downhill, and the former Clutch Player of the Year settled for a tough stepback. Wembanyama was camped under the basket for a possible tip-in, but Green boxed him out of the play. 

These two victories for the Warriors felt bigger than just two November wins. They arrived in San Antonio coming off an embarrassing loss to the Thunder, part of a 2-5 slide. Curry, who missed three of those games with an illness, labeled the moment a four out of 10 on an arbitrary crisis meter. Players needed to figure out how to best serve the team instead of overdribbling or letting their personal agendas crack through the team concept.

Even after Curry carried Golden State to a win on Wednesday, the situation was still serious enough for Kerr to address the team before the second matchup in San Antonio.

Kerr rarely calls back to his Chicago days, when he lifted three trophies with Michael Jordan in the late-90s. But Friday morning, he “was in his bag,” Curry said, with a detailed speech in pregame meetings. 

“You could tell he still has that fastball if he needs it,” Curry said. 

Channeling his coach and mentor, Phil Jackson, Kerr likened a team to a band on tour. Everyone plays a valuable role to come together and create something great. 

“You’ve got your lead singers, you’ve got your bass, acoustic, electric, whatever,” Curry said. “You’ve got your drummers. You got the stage hands, the guy that’s plugging in the speakers. He said he was just above plugging in the speakers. But it speaks to just like, it all matters. There’s value in all of that when a band’s going on tour. And I think Phil Jackson instilled that in him, and he used that as a reference for how we need to play and how we need to approach our identity.” 

Asked what role he’d play in a band, Curry laughed. Of course he’s the lead singer, are you kidding? 

But, to strain the metaphor, what band might Curry front? 

“Hayley Williams in Paramore tonight,” the two-time MVP joked. 

Curry was The Only Exception. And the Warriors’ matchup with the Spurs is definitely rock and roll.