3 takeaways for Spurs in win over Warriors

The San Antonio Spurs accomplished many things Saturday night. They handed the Golden State Warriors just their seventh loss in 69 games this season; they won their 44th consecutive regular-season home game, and their 33rd straight at home against the Warriors - a streak that goes all the way back to 1997; and they put Golden State on notice that if these two teams see each other in the playoffs, nothing's going to come easy.

Here are three things San Antonio can take away from its 87-79 win.

Related: 3 takeaways for Warriors after loss to Spurs

Danny Green gave Steph Curry fits

The Spurs sent aggressive traps at Curry all night, blitzing him as he came off high screens and effectively forcing the ball out of his hands. They got themselves into exhausting defensive rotations time and again, but they committed to making someone other than Curry beat them.

That's not a novel strategy by any means. The big difference is San Antonio's wings have the speed and length to: a) make it difficult for Curry to make effective passes out of those traps, and b) recover and close out space in a blink.

Kawhi Leonard's genius in this regard is no secret, and was again on full display, but Danny Green might've been the defensive star of the game. On top of recording the first block of a Curry 3-pointer this season, Green was diabolically disruptive in passing lanes, made airtight rotations, dropped down to bump the roll man, and altered shots at the rim. There's a reason the Spurs outscored the Warriors by 20 points when he was on the floor.

It seemed like any time Curry came around a screen, Green or Leonard was there to greet him. Curry got flustered and desperate; he rushed shots any time he got a sliver of airspace, and by the end of the game looked flat-out exhausted. The Spurs wings hounded him into an unprecedented 1-of-12 night from beyond the arc.

This wasn't the matchup for Tim Duncan

As much as it was defined by the performances of those present, the Spurs' big win was colored by one big absence. Head coach Gregg Popovich opted to remove Tim Duncan from the starting lineup for just the third time in his career, and played him just eight minutes off the bench.

With the Warriors down two centers, they had no choice but to play small all game, so the Spurs answered by swapping Duncan out for Boris Diaw and giving LaMarcus Aldridge big minutes at center.

Aldridge was terrific, leveraging his size mismatches to control the boards and bully the Warriors in the post, while doing a more-than-acceptable job keeping the paint sealed down at the other end. Diaw's certainly no speed demon, but he's more nimble than Duncan, and the Warriors didn't seem to have an answer for his slow-rolling drives to the hoop or herky-jerky post moves.

The equation changes if and when the Warriors have Andrew Bogut and Festus Ezeli back, but this game demonstrated that against Golden State's feared small-ball lineups, Duncan is, at best, extraneous.

Spurs got away with crashing the boards

The Spurs - despite ranking near the bottom of the league in offensive rebound rate - managed to earn themselves 14 extra possessions in this game, largely thanks to the marauding exploits of Leonard and Aldridge.

The Spurs effectively ignored the threat of Golden State run-outs, and made a point of exploiting one of the Warriors' few weaknesses by repeatedly crashing the offensive glass.

It worked. Golden State eventually had to redouble its efforts to prevent second-chance opportunities, which made it harder to get out and run off misses. Even when the Spurs crashed and whiffed, they mostly managed to corral Golden State's transition attack. The Warriors came in averaging a league-leading 20.7 fast-break points. They scored just 11 in this one.

There's only so much to take away from the one-game sample, especially since the Warriors looked plainly gassed playing on the second night of a road back-to-back. But the Spurs found an edge, went all-in to leverage it, and got off basically scot-free.