Stick your nose right on the canvas of the painting that is the Warriors’ 73-win season of 2015-16, and it’s ugly. Splotches and blotches, a blurry mess.

But take a few steps back from the canvas and you might see that season as a masterpiece, “The Starry Night” of NBA regular seasons.

Four years ago Monday, the Warriors sealed the deal. They beat the Memphis Grizzlies 125-104 at Oracle Arena in the final game of the regular season. That win — No. 73 — broke the record set by Michael Jordan and the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.

Ah, but the Warriors lost the NBA Finals to the Cleveland Cavaliers, wasting a 3-1 series lead. Stephen Curry, nursing injuries, was playing that Finals on a wing and a prayer.

These are eternal question in Warriors lore: Did they burn themselves out in pursuit of a regular-season record? Did the loss in the Finals render the 73-win record trivial and foolish?

Steve Kerr was in his second season as Warriors’ head coach. He was asked last week how he looks back on that 73-win record.

“It was an incredible accomplishment,” Kerr said, “and then to not finish it off, for me, meant that we couldn’t really celebrate. And that’s still the feeling. We have a small banner hanging in our practice facility, commemorating the 73 wins, but it definitely feels hollow, not finishing the deal.”

And yet, as a philosopher — was it Plato? — once said, “Seventy-three wins is seventy-three wins.”

Those Warriors opened the season with a 24-0 run and didn’t let up. They were getting fan mail from steamrollers. Coming off a stunning NBA title the season before, they found a higher gear. Even with Kerr missing the first 43 games with recurring headaches, the Warriors soared.

“I felt like we were much better than the year before, when we won the championship,” Kerr said. “We had the confidence that comes from winning a championship, and we had a year under our belts together, basically the same team returning, and the league hadn’t quite adjusted yet to what we were doing. ... I thought that year was the biggest separation we had between ourselves and the rest of the league.

“The style that we played — playing smaller, playing fast, shooting a ton of threes — most nights it felt teams just couldn’t keep up with all of that. I don’t mean to say that with arrogance, I’m saying it just sort of matter of fact. I remember games when we were really clicking, it just felt like the other team had no chance.”

I recall Kerr sending out caution signals publicly as the win total grew. Let’s not lose sight of our main goal.

The Warriors lost to the Timberwolves on April 5 and needed to win their last four games to pass the Bulls’ record. They won No. 70 at home against the Spurs, after which Kerr said of pursuing the record, “I’m a little uneasy about it.”

Draymond Green was not. His postgame statements seemed to fly in the face of Kerr’s caution.

“We have three games left,” Green said. “You all know what we’re chasing. You all know what’s out there. Think about the year we’ve had. Started 24-0. Haven’t lost two in a row all year. Have had several streaks of seven-plus wins in a row. Yet we’re sitting her needing three in a row. That tells you how hard this is to do.

“So you get this far and kind of tank it and say, ‘Never mind’? Let’s face it, we’ll probably never get to this point again. ... I think most of the guys in the locker room are all-in. ... If guys need rest, then hey, take a rest. But if you want to go for it, we’re going to go for it.”

Kerr said he doesn’t remember trying to cool his players’ jets, although he does recall being careful not to overplay his stars.

“To me, we were just in such a groove that I never felt like we were chasing anything. I just felt like it was happening on its own,” Kerr said. “Even if I had wanted to sound the alarm and stop it, there was no stopping it, because the team was so deep and had so much confidence, it just seemed like we were on cruise control.”

Was there conflict over Kerr exercising caution?

“I don’t remember there being any conflict,” Kerr said. “I remember one game, I think it was our 71st win, in Memphis, and I remember telling the team before the game that I was going to play everybody, that we weren’t going to chase anything, we should look to take care of the game playing everybody, and we’re not going to stretch ourselves too thin.

“We weren’t playing particularly well, and I remember Draymond came to me at halftime, said, ‘Coach, we all really want to win this game.’ I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ So I played the starters more in the second half, and we won the game (100-99), and that set up the final push. That was the only time I really remember having a specific conversation with a player about sort of pushing it a little bit.”

No. 72 was the next night, at San Antonio, 92-86. Then, three nights later, the deal-closer over the Grizzlies.

In the playoffs, the Warriors beat Houston 4-1, Portland 4-1, Oklahoma City 4-3, then blew that 3-1 lead and the Finals to Cleveland.

Said Kerr: “In retrospect, it’s easy to say, ‘Well, they lost, they shouldn’t have gone for (the record),’ as if the reason we lost is because we went for it. I don’t really look at it that way. Maybe some people do.”

Oh, some people do. They see it as a championship squandered.

Others, however, admire the 73 wins as a stand-alone monument to the greatness of a team that changed the game of basketball.

Scott Ostler is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler