OAKLAND, Calif. -- For seven incredible minutes, Oracle was witness to the Oklahoma City Thunder at their most terrifying. It took just that long for Oklahoma City to put up 30 points, for Kevin Durant to enter a mode in which a crowd rooting against him actually sighed when he missed.

Durant finished with 30 points in 18 minutes, a feat never before reached since the merger. At the end of the half he was felled by the foot of Mo Speights in what's hopefully a minor ankle sprain.

Before that injury happened, the Golden State Warriors impressed by clawing their way back from an early 17-point deficit. Steve Kerr brought in Iguodala to put out the growing conflagration and Golden State slowed a team that looked more like a force of nature than its namesake.

Klay Thompson was shifted onto Westbrook, shading him properly in pick-and-roll coverage and doing his best to contain a human explosion. Speights whiffed when he tried to draw a charge on Westbrook and you could hardly blame him for missing. Drawing a charge on Westbrook conjures trying to catch lightning with a trash bag.

Stephen Curry helped down in the paint, sagging off Andre Roberson by what looked like the distance between bases on a diamond. Curry did his part by raking four steals to go along with his 34 points, nine rebounds and seven assists.

The Warriors were up against it, getting skewered defensively on the heels of Thursday's news that center Andrew Bogut is out indefinitely after undergoing platelet-rich plasma therapy on his ailing right knee.

"Well we gotta scrap cuz' obviously [Bogut's] not out there to protect the rim, so you're not able to cut the ball off or get deflections, you know, close off lanes," Curry said. "The paint's kind of open so you want to make sure guards and wings put up a good line of defense and try to stop the first attacks."

Curry's involvement in the scrap won't make the highlights because his offense is far better television. His scoring performance was incendiary in a way that's not normal but fairly normal for him. Down the stretch he showed off his game below the 3-point line, hitting layups to close the contest. Not merely a distance shooter, Curry is converting better than 66 percent of his attempts within 8 feet this season.

It might be early to talk MVP, but if we're talking, he must be mentioned. No player has a greater impact on his team's offense, and he's the starting point guard of the No. 1-ranked defense.

Bogut's absence will test the durability of that ranking. Draymond Green was ubiquitous yet again, playing center capably, but was obviously exhausted after the battle. The Warriors have a challenging task if they're to make up for the Bogut void with blitzing wing defense. Maybe the answer is growth from Festus Ezeli.

Barring that, maybe the answer is more Iguodala.

"Andre always settles the game for us, no matter what he's doing, whether it's defensively or handling the ball, decision-making, the numbers don't really show what he does for us, but he's a big part of everything we do," Kerr said.

Later Kerr added: "He's one of the smartest players I've ever been around. He just gets it. One of our coaches said, 'He's playing chess while everybody is playing checkers.'"

One of Iguodala's favorite moves is going for the strip before shooters even get into the form. Lacking Bogut for a while, the Warriors will need to lean on plays like this.

Iguodala protested doing a postgame interview ("I didn't do anything") before eventually talking about his knack for stripping the ball in the broader context of what the team needs now.

"I think we got to be smart about it, know who you are. A guy like Mo Speights is really good at taking charges. A guy like Draymond Green can do a little bit of both. I just have a knack for [stripping the ball], but we just got to do a better job of being there early defensively, communicating is what's most important for our team."

The Warriors are there early in the big picture. They retain the league's best record and boast perhaps the top MVP candidate. They at the very least seem capable of coming up big while lacking their biggest presence down low.