ATLANTA — Steph Curry pump-fakes, pivots and shoots. He dekes, ducks, elevates. He slides, jab-steps, fires. Again and again, the ball leaves his fingertips, and, after an impossible hang time, choks through the net.

Curry’s face is blank, his eyes distant. He might as well be in an empty gym. But he’s not — he’s running through his shot sequence in front of hundreds, maybe even thousands of fans at State Farm Arena more than an hour before tipoff Monday night.

Steph Curry, decent at basketball pic.twitter.com/xUYFioJEsP — Jay Busbee (@jaybusbee) December 3, 2018





It’s the same scene, night after night, city after city. The Warriors — currently in the middle of their longest road trip of the season, a five-gamer — enter a visiting gym that sounds an awful lot like Oracle Arena. Over the last four years, they’ve played 176 road games, and in 127 of those, they’ve walked off the court as victors, conquering not just the other team but its fanbase as well.

“It gives you an extra boost of adrenaline and energy,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said, “when [you’re on the road and] there’s still a buzz and a support for your own team.”

The Warriors get those kinds of boosts an awful lot these days.

What happens when the Warriors come to town

The Warriors are a sleek machine, as adept at generating storylines as baskets. On this night, a routine December game in Atlanta, Golden State’s lone visit to Atlanta will spur half a dozen different stories: Kerr on the comparisons between Curry and Trae Young; Curry running out of patience with those comparisons; Kevin Durant getting trolled by Atlanta fans; KD giving it right back to other fans; and Klay Thompson dismissing comparisons between the Warriors and the Hawks. Oh yeah, and there was a game too, a runaway 128-111 Warriors rout.

When the Warriors arrive in your town, then it’s not just a game, it’s an experience. Ticket prices jump when Golden State comes to town — the lowest get-in-the-door tickets for the Warriors on this night are $54, compared with single digits when most other teams arrive in Atlanta. Courtside, everyone from Quavo to Chris Tucker to Falcons running back Devonta Freeman wants to see and be seen at the Warriors game.

Atlanta’s always been a friendly town for visiting teams, both because of the transient population and the bandwagoning tendencies of fans sick of the local teams’ futility. Atlanta still holds the record for attendance at a regular-season NBA game: 62,046, set when the Hawks played the Bulls in the Georgia Dome on Michael Jordan’s last season in Chicago.

“This reminds me a lot of playing with the Bulls,” said Kerr, who played 22 minutes in that Dome game. “Back then, we saw a lot of red 23 jerseys, and now we see a ton of blue 30 and 35 jerseys.”

View photos The Warriors take over every town they enter. (Getty) More

He’s not kidding. Throughout the arena, both adults and kids — so, so many kids — are sporting W’s gear. They shout Steph’s name as he shoots, they position themselves so that they can get selfies with him firing away right behind them. Fans line the entire half of the court where Curry is working out; the house is more packed for this shooting session than it’s been in quite a few Hawks games of recent years.

You know this anecdotally, but the numbers bear it out: Golden State draws really, really, really well on the road. Back in 2011-12, the last year the team didn’t make the playoffs, the Warriors ranked 25th in percentage of seats filled on the road. The next year: 12th. In 2013-14, coming off just their second playoff appearance in 20 years, they moved up to seventh.

Then came the championship years. In 2014-15, the year of their first title, they ranked second only to Cleveland. The next year, the Warriors sold out 100.5 percent of capacity for every single road game, a mark only eclipsed that year by Kobe Bryant’s retirement tour. In 2016-17, Golden State reigned supreme, again selling out every single seat. And last year, while again ranking as the league’s top draw, the Warriors played to an average of only 76 open seats every single night.

Story continues