Eleven Straight: Stephon Castle's Season-High 32 Sends the Spurs Rolling Past a Curry-Less Warriors, 123-85

The San Antonio Spurs did not just beat the Golden State Warriors on Friday night. They buried them from the opening tip. Stephon Castle poured in a season-high 32 points, Victor Wembanyama added 12 points and 12 rebounds, and the Spurs rolled to a 123-85 NBA Cup win in San Antonio for their 11th straight victory, the Associated Press reported. The win kept the Spurs unbeaten in Cup play.

The game was effectively over before most fans had settled into their seats. San Antonio opened on an 18-0 run, according to the Warriors' own game recap. By halftime the Spurs led 63-33, and they stretched the margin to 43 points in the third quarter. The Spurs shot 50% from the floor while holding Golden State to 25% shooting. San Antonio's starters were finished for the night by the end of the third quarter.

Castle was the engine. The third-year guard hit five 3-pointers, matching his career high, and blew past his previous season best of 24 points, which he scored against Oklahoma City on opening night. Keldon Johnson gave the Spurs another lift with 18 points off the bench.

Wembanyama did not need to carry the scoring load. His double-double came in limited work on a night when San Antonio's guards and bench did the damage.

Golden State played without Stephen Curry, and it showed. The Warriors' leading scorer was LJ Cryer, who set a career high with 20 points and knocked down six 3-pointers. Beyond Cryer, the Warriors found little against a San Antonio defense that Sports Illustrated's Spurs coverage singled out as dominant.

The loss dropped Golden State to 1-1 in NBA Cup play. The Warriors now sit behind the Spurs in West Group C with two group games left. In the Cup's group stage, every game counts toward a spot in the knockout rounds, so a 38-point loss also hurts the Warriors' point differential, one of the tiebreakers when group records are level.

San Antonio has spent the last few seasons building around Wembanyama, and Friday showed what happens when the pieces around him start to fire. Castle was the NBA's 2024-25 Rookie of the Year, a season after he won a national title at UConn. His growth into a confident scorer gives the Spurs something every contender needs: a second creator who can take over a game when the defense loads up on the big man.

Eleven wins in a row is not a fluke. It takes a team that shares the ball, defends as a unit and shows up night after night. That is old-fashioned, team-first basketball, and the Spurs are winning with it. Proverbs says iron sharpens iron, and this group of young players looks like it is pushing each other to get better every week.

Fans should also be careful not to overreact to one lopsided night. Golden State was without its best player, and the true tests come against healthy contenders. But a team that can turn a game against a proud franchise into a blowout in the first quarter is sending a message to the rest of the West.

The Spurs carry their 11-game streak into the rest of the NBA Cup group stage, where they sit ahead of the Warriors in West Group C. For Golden State, the immediate question is how long it must survive without Curry, and whether young players like Cryer can keep supplying offense until the roster is whole again.

For one Friday night in San Antonio, though, the story was simple. Castle was brilliant, the bench was sharp, and the Spurs looked like a team that believes it belongs among the league's best.