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It’s Early, but the Warriors Are Dominating the N.B.A.

Stephen Curry, with the ball in midair, scored 24 points Tuesday night in leading the Warriors to a 111-77 rout of the Lakers.Credit...Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

OAKLAND, Calif. — After the pregame introductions and usual pyrotechnics, but before the game’s opening tip, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green took a microphone to center court. He thanked fans at Oracle Arena for their support and wished them a happy holiday season.

“Let’s make history tonight,” he said. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

About a minute later on Tuesday night, Green drained the game’s first shot, a 3-pointer, against the Los Angeles Lakers. The Warriors never trailed and the Lakers never threatened. With a 111-77 rout, Golden State set an N.B.A. record for the best start to a season, winning its first 16 games.

“Eventually we will lose,” the Warriors’ interim coach, Luke Walton, said afterward, though no one can reasonably guess when it might happen.

The Warriors, a cornucopia of talent and a feast for the eyes, reached Thanksgiving playing better than they did last season, when they won a franchise-record 67 regular-season games and cruised to their first N.B.A. championship in 40 years.

Behind guard Stephen Curry, as slippery as mercury, the Warriors are dominating teams in ways rarely seen, outscoring opponents by an average of 15.6 points.

Attention now turns to when the Warriors might lose and whether they can reach two other records — the 33-game winning streak of the Lakers in 1971-72 or the 72-10 season of the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.

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Warriors fans saw their team, the defending champions, get off to the best start in N.B.A. history.Credit...Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

The Warriors play at Phoenix on Friday and back home against the Sacramento Kings on Saturday. They then embark on a seven-game trip, including games in Toronto, Brooklyn and Boston.

“Seventy-two is a special number,” Curry said at his locker after the game. “Thirty-three is a special number as well. There are obviously still milestones we can continue to go after. But you go after them with how you approach each game. We’re not going to win 72 on Friday. You got to continue to just stay in the moment. When you stay in the moment, good things happen, because everybody’s just wrapped up in the process.”

Those numbers feel attainable but far away. Sixteen became a goal for the Warriors only about a week ago.

“The last few games, we kind of locked in on it,” Green said. “We said: ‘Hey, a chance to make history. Why not?’ ”

Now that the record was theirs, it felt both monumental and small.

“It’s cool to be in the history books, but at the end of the day, it’s 16 regular-season wins,” Green said.

Two other teams had won their first 15 games. The 1948-49 Washington Capitols, coached by Red Auerbach, started 15-0 and pushed their record to 21-2. But they finished just 38-22 and lost to the Minneapolis Lakers in the Basketball Association of America championship series, the season before the B.A.A. and the National Basketball League merged to create the N.B.A. (The N.B.A. considers the 1946-47 founding of the B.A.A. as the start of its official history.)

The 1993-94 Houston Rockets, led by center Hakeem Olajuwon, also began 15-0. They slowed to finish the regular season 58-24, the second-best record in the league, but won the N.B.A. title that season and the next.

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Festus Ezeli dunking against the Lakers.Credit...Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

Before this season, the Warriors could be fairly dismissed as likely championship repeaters. Last season felt like a surprise, as if the Warriors had caught the rest of the N.B.A. off guard with their small lineups and free-spirited style. Built from the outside in, dependent on speed and 3-point shooting, the Warriors have none of the usual ballast that stabilizes traditional N.B.A. powers.

Playing the Warriors is like chasing butterflies, the strongest opponents dizzied by feints and flits to the point of looking foolish. The Lakers were flat-footed victims of an array of sleight of hand and alley-oops as the Warriors had 32 assists on 45 field goals.

Curry, especially, treats every trip down the floor as an exuberant tease, another opportunity for a mind-bending highlight — a high-arcing 3-pointer here, a no-look pass there, a double-crossover move to make opponents fall and fans rise as if tethered to the same invisible pulley system.

Only the Harlem Globetrotters toy with opponents in so many ways. Curry can be half-expected to whistle as he plays keep-away from opponents, or to appear midgame holding a bucket of confetti.

He leads the league in scoring (32.1 points per game) and is on pace for 400 3-pointers. He set the league mark last season with 286.

Midway through the first quarter against the Lakers, a Curry 3-point attempt hit the back of the rim. Harrison Barnes snared the long rebound and shuffled the ball back to Curry, who faked another 3, drove toward the basket and flipped a pass behind his back to Barnes, standing on the 3-point line. Barnes drained the shot. The crowd erupted. The Lakers called timeout.

By the end of the first quarter, the score was 30-11, and the only remaining suspense was whether the halftime entertainer, an acrobat on an eight-foot unicycle, would drop any of the dishes that she flipped from her feet to a stack atop her head. She did not. It was one performance that even Curry could not match.

Curry had 24 points in 30 minutes and rested alongside other Golden State starters in the fourth quarter as the Warriors pushed the lead as high as 41. As if the generational torch had not already been passed, Los Angeles’ Kobe Bryant, now 37 and in his 20th season with the Lakers, missed 13 of his 14 shots and had 4 points. He was the anti-Curry.

“You can’t have so much bravado and enjoy the good times and then have times like this and kind of cower away from it,” Bryant said. “You’ve got to take your lumps as well.”

Beyond the predictions of when the Warriors might lose or how many they might win, the only other suspense until the postseason may be the date of Steve Kerr’s return as head coach. Kerr had surgery in July to repair a ruptured disc in his back and follow-up surgery in early September. He is in regular contact with the team and is at Oracle Arena during games, but he is not coaching from the sideline, leading practices or traveling to road games.

Walton, the 35-year-old son of the Hall of Fame player Bill Walton and a two-time N.B.A. champion with the Lakers, has presided over the team in Kerr’s absence. Officially, the team’s record, including its 16 victories, will get credited to Kerr’s coaching ledger. Kerr called that ridiculous, but Walton said on Tuesday that Kerr’s fingerprints were all over the team’s success.

“Everything we do is based on what Steve has set up here,” Walton said.

Kerr came to Golden State’s shootaround on Tuesday, Walton said, and praised the team’s dedication to the four core values he has established: joy, mindfulness, compassion and competition.

“When we hit those four things,” Walton said before the game, “we’re not only tough to beat, but we’re very fun to watch, we’re very fun to coach, and we’re very fun to be around.”

When the clocked ticked to zeros, the video boards over the court displayed the Warriors at 16-0, atop the 15-0 Capitols and Rockets of years past. The Warriors know they will lose at some point — “most likely,” Curry admitted — but they received the congratulations of coaches in the locker room.

“They’re in the history books,” Walton said. “But we also reminded them that it’s November, and we have a lot of work to do.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: At 16-0, Warriors Soar Into Record Book . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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