Warriors win eighth straight, reinventing themselves without Jimmy Butler

The Golden State Warriors have won eight consecutive games, their longest streak since the team's 2021-22 championship season, after opening this season 0-3. The run reached its most emphatic point on Monday night at Chase Center, where Golden State beat the New Orleans Pelicans 138-87, a 51-point margin that the team's own game notes called the largest victory in the arena's history. The Warriors, now 8-3, head into Wednesday night's game at Houston against Kevin Durant and the Rockets carrying the best record they have held this deep into a season in several years.

What makes the streak notable is who has been missing. Golden State has not had Jimmy Butler, its top perimeter scorer and the centerpiece of last season's trade-deadline additions, for a single game. Butler tore his right ACL on Jan. 19, 2026, had reconstruction surgery weeks later, and is targeting a January or February 2027 return, according to ESPN's Anthony Slater. Wing Moses Moody has also been out, and center Kristaps Porziņģis announced on Nov. 6 that he is stepping away from basketball indefinitely to address an undisclosed health issue, a move the team has stressed is not a retirement but leaves his season, and his $20 million salary for trade purposes, in limbo.

A blowout built on balance

Against the Pelicans, Golden State held New Orleans to a season-low 87 points while five players reached double figures. Stephen Curry scored 25, Brandin Podziemski matched a season high with 25 of his own, rookie Yaxel Lendeborg added 23 points, seven rebounds and four assists while making all four of his three-point attempts, and Charles Bassey came off the bench for 10 points and 10 rebounds, his first double-double of the season. Guard De'Anthony Melton contributed 16 points on four made threes. The team's official recap noted the win completed a 6-0 homestand and extended the streak to eight games, Golden State's longest since a nine-game run during the 2021-22 title run.

The breadth of the win reflects a pattern across the whole streak, not just one night. According to an NBA.com analysis published Nov. 10, Golden State has shot 40.3 percent from three during the eight-game run, the best mark in the league over that stretch, and ranks among the top three teams in bench scoring. Four of the eight wins have come after the Warriors trailed by double digits, the second time in franchise history they have authored that many double-digit comebacks within a single winning streak. The same analysis described Golden State as the first team in NBA history to follow an 0-3 start with a streak of this length.

• Record: 8-3, after an 0-3 start to the season
• Streak: Eight straight wins, longest since the 2021-22 championship season
• Nov. 9 margin: 51 points (138-87 over New Orleans), largest win in Chase Center history
• Missing: Jimmy Butler (torn ACL), Moses Moody (injury), Kristaps Porziņģis (stepped away from basketball Nov. 6)

Curry's late-career surge, a rookie's rapid rise

At 38, Curry is playing some of the most efficient basketball of his career, shooting 45.7 percent from three during the streak. In Golden State's Nov. 7 overtime win over Orlando, he scored 41 points, the 77th 40-point game of his career, tying him with Oscar Robertson for eighth on the NBA's all-time list. Against New Orleans two nights later he passed DeMar DeRozan for 16th on the league's all-time scoring list, reaching 26,803 career points, according to the NBA.com recap of that game. He currently sits seventh on the league's early-season Kia MVP Ladder.

The larger story of the turnaround, though, belongs to Lendeborg, the No. 11 pick in the 2026 draft out of Michigan. Through his first ten NBA games he is averaging 21.4 points, 7.2 rebounds and 4.0 assists, and his 37-point outing in a 124-112 win over the Clippers on Nov. 2 — a game Curry and Draymond Green both sat out — was the most points by a Warriors rookie since Curry himself in 2010. He has scored enough through ten games to join Wilt Chamberlain and Rick Barry as the only rookies in franchise history to reach 200 points that quickly. Podziemski, in his fourth season after signing a five-year extension over the summer, is also posting career highs in scoring, assists and three-point shooting, and Green has shifted to playing center more frequently, a move that has reduced his scoring but leaned into his passing and rebounding.

Coach Steve Kerr's message after the 0-3 start, delivered following an Oct. 24 loss to Phoenix, has stuck with the group. Curry relayed it to reporters after Golden State's sixth straight win, over Miami on Nov. 5.

"He just mentioned sticking with the process and the things that he'd noticed on film," Curry said, recalling Kerr's message, according to a report from ClutchPoints.

What's next

The win streak faces its sternest test yet on the road. Golden State opens a five-game trip Wednesday night at Houston, where Durant, the former Warriors forward who helped the franchise win two championships before leaving in 2019, now plays. The Rockets have been built as one of the Western Conference's top contenders this season, and the matchup will be the two sides' first meeting since Curry passed and Durant's name resurfaced repeatedly in offseason reunion speculation that never materialized into a trade. Beyond Wednesday's game, the Warriors' schedule does not get easier: the five-game trip is their longest road stretch of the season, a genuine measuring stick for whether a team missing three rotation regulars can sustain, rather than simply produce in flashes, the depth and shot-making that have carried it to 8-3.

For a franchise that spent much of last spring and summer answering questions about an aging core, a $40 million center whose basketball future is suddenly uncertain, and a star forward who may not play again until deep into 2027, the streak has offered an unexpected answer: for now, at least, the "Strength in Numbers" approach Kerr has preached since 2015 is working again, built around a rookie no one outside the organization projected to be this productive and a 38-year-old who keeps climbing the league's all-time scoring charts.