The Warriors are making good on their quest to dominate at home.

For the week of Monday, Jan. 5 – Sunday, Jan. 11

Record: 3-0

Upon Steve Kerr’s arrival, he made a couple things very clear. First, he knew he was inheriting a talented team. And second, he wanted his team - and believed they had the ability - to dominate on their own home floor. 34 games into the season, it’s becoming abundantly obvious that both of his assumptions were precisely on point. With three more victories over Oklahoma City, Indiana and Cleveland this past week, the Warriors took another big step towards becoming the best home team in the league. Friday’s victory over the Cavaliers marked Golden State’s 14th-consecutive win at Oracle Arena, and as evidence in support of Kerr’s first conviction, the streak has been filled with dominating performances. Their average margin of victory over those 14 games is 17.6 points, and the average score of their just-completed undefeated six-game homestand was a 118-96 Warriors victory. That’s not winning. That’s pure and utter domination.

To be the best team in the best conference, you need to capitalize on every advantage available to you, and Kerr has clearly reinforced that understanding in his veteran-laden team. It’s not as if the Dubs were a bad home team in recent years, but they squandered enough should-be victories to ultimately put them in disadvantageous positions come playoff time, which left room for this current improvement. Oracle Arena is widely regarded as the toughest place for visiting teams to play in the entire league, and so every opportunity the Warriors have to play in front of their passionate home crowd is another advantage over whoever their opponent might be. It’s easy to lose track of that necessary desperation during the arduous trek through an 82-game season, but come playoff time, the Dubs will be mighty glad they took the message to heart from the get-go.

Standout Spotlight: Klay Thompson

When you win Western Conference Player of the Week honors, chances are you’ve got a pretty good shot at the Spotlight too. With this week’s award, Klay Thompson joins LeBron James, LaMarcus Aldridge and James Harden as the only two-time repeaters so far this season. He also becomes the first Warriors guard to earn Player of the Week honors twice in the same season since Baron Davis in 2004-05. In Golden State’s three victories, Thompson averaged a Western Conference-leading 27.7 points to go with 3.7 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 1.33 steals and 1.00 blocks in 29.3 minutes, hitting 51.9 percent from the field, 50.0 percent from three-point range and 93.3 percent from the free throw line. Oh, and don’t forget the 2.3 stitches per game, resulting from being on the wrong end of an incidental J.R. Smith elbow to the forehead. The bandage he’s currently sporting as a result is a fitting symbol of the way he’s changed his game to become one of only four players with multiple 40-point games this season (Harden, James and Damian Lillard are the others). While he sits behind only Kyle Korver in 3-point shooting percentage among all players with a minimum of 148 attempts, he’s also on pace to set new career-highs for free-throw makes and attempts in a season by the time the Dubs return from the All-Star break. Oh, and as Robin Lopez and now Kevin Durant have become well aware, he can get up too. With the West stacked with guards like Harden, Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Russell Westbrook, Damian Lillard and his fellow Splash Brother Stephen Curry, there’s unfortunately no guarantee Thompson makes his first All-Star team this year. If he keeps playing like this, however, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to come up with a realistic explanation as to why he should be left out.

The Week Ahead:

While the Warriors currently have the second-most wins in the NBA (29), they’ve also played two fewer games (34) than any other team in the league. Hence, you could say the schedule has been kind to the Dubs, but that inevitably means they’ll play more games than any other team from here on out. That equilibrating begins this week, when the Warriors play a stretch of four games in five nights, three of which are on the road (a January rarity). The first set of back-to-backs begins in Utah on Tuesday and concludes back in Oakland on Wednesday for a pair of games against the Jazz and Heat. While Utah’s record may not indicate it, the Jazz have been fairing better of late, and assuming both Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade play on Wednesday, Miami’s certainly no pushover either. The Dubs will be off on Thursday, and then head out to Oklahoma City for the first game of a brutal back-to-back against the Thunder on Friday night. Golden State pushed the Thunder around in their recent encounter in Oakland last week (a 26-point Warriors victory), so you can assume Oklahoma City will be looking for some redemption on their own home court. Should the Dubs prove victorious again (and even if they don’t), their reward is a bout against the always-troublesome Rockets in Houston the following night. Both clearly amongst the Western Conference favorites, the Warriors and Rockets are quite familiar with each other, adding even greater intrigue to what should already be a highly-entertaining matchup. It’s a brutal stretch no doubt, but this is the kind of scenario where having kept their starter’s minutes relatively low up to this point should pay off for the Warriors, as the schedule will demand they play well and play often throughout these four games.