You are Locked on Warriors, your daily Golden State Warriors podcast. I am Daniel Rue, your host,

and so happy to bring you your team every day. And this game, the Warriors win over the Denver Nuggets,

was a great example of what separates out a pretty good team from a great team, at least in terms

of regular season success. And you can see that difference in terms of how the

Mavericks had to approach the game on Wednesday against the Warriors at Oracle,

versus how the Warriors were able to handle Thursday's game in Denver. So they had a rough travel day,

they had to leave from Oracle, go straight to Denver, lose time, and go up in the high altitude. And so it was one of those

games that in many other circumstances would be a schedule loss. And the Warriors are just too good for that.

The Nuggets also made some mistakes, some of which you categorize is unusual, but still

young guy mistakes. And that is something Denver most certainly

has their fair share of. But the Warriors deserve a lot of credit for fighting through it, and a lot

of guys had really strong games, really from top to bottom. But where I feel like the story of

this contest really needs to start us with Javelle McGee. And so Zaza-Pichulia picked up two early

fouls, less than five minutes into the

game. He had to come out. The second one was a little bit dubious. And Coach Kerr had, you know,

a kind of a complicated decision because David West has settled in pretty well to that kind of second

unit role as a center. And they've tried Kavanaughan Luni. And it was Javelle McGee's turn in his

former arena. He's played for a few teams, but he did play for the nuggets, including in that

series against the Warriors in 2013. And he played great. Part of it is that McGee's game is more

conducive to playing with better surrounding talent, particularly

from a passing perspective.

But another part of it is that he brings some elements that the other Warriors bigs do not

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