Forty seconds into Monday night’s game in Denver, the Warriors looked like they were headed for another rough night.

Nikola Jokić hit a three. Christian Braun picked off a Draymond Green pass. Jamal Murray followed with another three, and just like that, the Nuggets were up 6-0. Golden State was a winless team, playing on the road, and staring at a long evening.

Then everything flipped.

The Warriors walked out with a 134-114 win, powered by two very different kinds of brilliance. Stephen Curry didn’t miss a shot. Yaxel Lendeborg missed plenty, but still finished with 31 points, 12 rebounds, and six assists.

Curry’s box score looks almost too clean to be real: 24 points on 8-of-8 shooting, 3-of-3 from deep, and 5-of-5 at the line. He did it all in 27 minutes. Somehow, he only had three points at halftime.

That changed quickly in the third quarter. Curry opened with a layup and just kept slipping through Denver’s defense. He scored 21 after halftime as the Warriors turned a four-point lead into a 100-84 advantage heading into the fourth. They put up 40 points in that one quarter alone.

This wasn’t one of those Curry games where he takes over by launching shots from everywhere. He only needed eight attempts. He also added two steals and drew an offensive foul on Braun in the fourth. For a team that came in 0-3 and needed their veterans back after they sat out Saturday’s loss in Phoenix, that kind of energy mattered just as much as the perfect shooting.

I'm Not Sure Anyone Expected This

But Lendeborg was the player I kept coming back to. The rookie went 1-of-8 from three, which should've made getting to 31 points pretty tough. Instead, he made eight of his 11 two-point attempts and attacked the rim enough to shoot 13 free throws. He knocked down 12 of them.

When the outside shot wasn’t falling, he didn’t just stand around waiting for it to come back.

And the passing is real. Six assists from a forward in his fourth NBA game would’ve been worth noting on its own. One set up Curry’s early third-quarter three. Later, Lendeborg found De’Anthony Melton, Al Horford, and Gui Santos for fourth-quarter threes. He can score, but he’s already seeing the play before it happens.

That skill didn’t come out of nowhere. Golden State took Lendeborg 11th after he helped Michigan win the national title, and he followed that up by earning Summer League championship-game MVP. His regular-season start has been just as loud. He had 18 points, 13 rebounds, and six assists against Memphis, then put up 26, nine, and five against Phoenix without the veterans.

Against Jokić and the Nuggets, he somehow got even better.

The Warriors’ lack of size is still going to be a problem this season. One win doesn’t change that. But it’s also given Lendeborg a big job right away, and Monday showed why that might be a blessing. He grabbed four offensive rebounds, and Golden State won the overall rebounding battle 50-36. Aaron Gordon finished with seven points on 2-of-10 shooting. The rookie didn’t just survive that matchup. He belonged in it.

There was plenty of help, too. Podziemski had 18 points, seven rebounds, and five assists without a turnover, finishing with a game-high plus-33. The Warriors made 22 of their 44 threes. They’re not going to shoot 50 percent from deep every night, and Denver was missing a few rotational players, including Cameron Johnson. Golden State still had to take advantage, and they did.

At 1-3, the Warriors haven’t answered every question. Monday did answer one, though: Lendeborg’s first three games weren’t just a fun rookie streak. He can share the floor with Curry and carry a lot of the offense himself.

All stats courtesy of NBA.com.

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