What we learned as Wiggins fuels Warriors' gritty win over Grizzlies

What we learned as Wiggins fuels Warriors’ gritty win over Grizzlies originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – After opening 2025 with a 34-point blowout win, the Warriors on Saturday night at Chase Center followed that with a feel-good 121-113 victory against the Memphis Grizzlies.

The Warriors were without Steph Curry, as well as Brandin Podziemski and Gary Payton II, and Jonathan Kuminga didn’t play the second half against Memphis because of a right ankle injury. Golden State now is 5-2 this season in games without Curry after being 3-5 when he didn’t play last season.

Andrew Wiggins scored a game-high 24 points, with 22 coming in the second half. Dennis Schroder’s 17 points were his most in a Warriors jersey, two more than the previous high he scored last game. As a team, the Warriors had six players score in double figures.

As the Grizzlies crushed the Warriors in the paint, outscoring them 64-32 down low, Golden State let it fly behind the 3-point line. The Warriors went 23 of 43, a much different clip than the Grizzlies making only nine of their 27 3-point attempts.

Here are three takeaways from the Warriors’ second straight win to improve to 18-16 this season.

Kuminga’s Night Ends Early

From the words of his coaches and teammates, to watching the product on the floor, Kuminga has been playing his best stretch of basketball lately in his four-year NBA career. And that’s because of much more than his back-to-back 34-point performances.

Everything has been coming together lately for Kuminga. But he had to limp to the locker room in the second quarter while attempting to block a shot. Coming down, Kuminga took a dangerous fall when he was sandwiched between two Grizzlies. His right ankle landed on Brandon Clarke’s right foot, as well as Jake LaRavia’s left foot, rolling it hard and immediately telling the Warriors bench he had to be taken out.

Kuminga wasn’t seen on the court during halftime as his teammates got shots up. He was ruled out for the rest of the game with a sprained right ankle soon after the third quarter began.

At the time of his injury, Kuminga was the Warriors’ leading scorer. In 15 minutes off the bench, Kuminga had scored 13 points, going 4 of 6 from the field while making all three of his 3-point attempts. He also had two rebounds and two assists, but four turnovers.

In his previous six games, Kuminga was averaging 24.3 points and 8.0 rebounds while shooting 52.7 percent overall, 35 percent beyond the arc and 71.7 percent at the free-throw line.

Second-Half Surge

The main reason the Warriors held a four-point halftime lead was because of the 3-point line. Though the Grizzlies held a 14-point advantage in the paint, the Warriors made six more 3-pointers, giving them an 18-point advantage from long distance. However, that wasn’t because of Wiggins, who was shooting over 40 percent on threes this season.

Wiggins scored just two points through the first two quarters, going 1 of 6 from the field while missing all four of his 3-point tries. With Kuminga out for the second half, the Warriors badly needed Wiggins to find his shot. And boy did he deliver.

He scored the Warriors’ first seven points of the third quarter. By the time seven minutes had been played, Wiggins had scored 16 points, making all five of his shot attempts, including three 3-pointers. Wiggins in his last four games was averaging only 9.5 points, and then scored 18 of the Warriors’ 34 points in the third quarter.

His emphatic dunk with a little over a minute left in the fourth quarter had Dub Nation rocking, putting the Warriors ahead by 10 points as the game-sealing bucket.

Brotherly Love

Whenever the Warriors and the Grizzlies play each other, drama usually follows. Technical fouls. Both teams “breaking the code.” Stars players going at one another. It all makes for great entertainment.

A different, more heartwarming spectacle took place in the first quarter of Saturday night’s game.

With 4:04 left in the first quarter, Warriors backup point guard Pat Spencer, 28, entered the game for Schroder. So, Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins made it a family affair by immediately bringing in his younger brother, 24-year-old Cam, who walked right up to Pat, tapped him on the back with his left hand and got right into a defensive stand to guard him full-court.

There wasn’t much action between the two for the next four minutes, until the final seconds of the first quarter when Pat hit a floater from the left baseline with Cam just a few feet away.

Cam had the better box score stats, playing 13 minutes and scoring seven points, but older brother Pat, who had two points, three rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block, got the last laugh in an eight-point win.

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