CLEVELAND — Kevin Durant scored 32 points, Stephen Curry added 23 and the Golden State Warriors extended their road winning streak to 13 games with a 118-108 Martin Luther King holiday victory Monday night over the Cleveland Cavaliers, their struggling NBA Finals foes.
Durant scored 16 in the third quarter for the defending NBA champions, who haven’t lost outside Oracle Arena since Nov. 22.
LeBron James scored 32 points and Kevin Love 17 for Cleveland, which had its home winning streak stopped at 13. Isaiah Thomas, getting his first taste of the Warriors-Cavaliers rivalry, had 19 points in a season-high 32 minutes as he works his way back from a hip injury.
It was Golden State’s second straight win over the Cavs, who have dropped eight of 10 dating to a loss to the Warriors on Christmas Day. Cleveland was down just 93-91 entering the fourth, but the Cavs missed 17 of 19 shots to open the period, allowing Golden State to throttle away.
The Warriors and Cavs have met in the Finals each of the past three years. There’s no guarantee there will be a fourth matchup, and at this point only one of them looks prepared for June.
Cleveland was home after going 1-4 on a road trip that included blowout losses in Minnesota and Toronto.
But while the Cavs aren’t playing like themselves, Warriors coach Steve Kerr was confident they’d look different in June.
“I am very aware that they have LeBron,” Kerr said before the game. “We’ve played them in the Finals three straight years and I guarantee you there was a moment like this in all three seasons — at least one, sometimes more. So we know. He’s always going to get the ship righted and what happens now has nothing to do with what happens later.”