This is what the Warriors can still do

The Warriors seemed to have reconstituted death, if you can put aside all the goth connotations that spring from such a sentence. It’s in reference to their past Death Lineup that used to disappear opponents in the third quarters of most games when the Warriors were winning championships.

The Nuggets are certainly banged up, and whoever is healthy is bitching at each other, and won’t be much more than chum in this first round. But it must be dispiriting to see Steph Curry coming off the bench and knowing you’re about to get your brain pulled out through your nose.

Curry went for 32 last night and was +34 when he was on the court as Golden State trounced Denver, 126-120 to take a 2-0 lead in this first-round series. That mostly came with Jordan Poole (29 points himself shooting 57 percent from the floor overall), Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Andrew Wiggins. And if you’ve ever wanted to know what it was like to watch an avalanche from a safe distance, this was pretty much it. There was a point when the Nuggets were up 13 in the 2nd quarter. They finished it down six and never got any closer than that again.

Just like in their prime days, when the Dubs got rolling it felt like they scored every six seconds and from either 50 feet out or on some layup after four passes that all looked like they were delivered by the Tasmanian Devil.

There really hasn’t been anything that felt as momentous as when the Warriors start clicking and everything is falling and the scoreboard tilts their way heavily. Feels like the world is going 2012 on whoever has the misfortune of playing them.

The Nuggets aren’t much more than target practice right now but the last thing anyone in the West wants is seeing the Warriors get to fine tune without any risk.