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OAKLAND — The Warriors’ still don’t have the injured Stephen Curry in their lineup, and for the first half of Wednesday’s game against the Jazz, that fact was painfully obvious.

The first half of Wednesday’s game was a slog — neither team was playing particularly good basketball and the game was anything but aesthetically pleasing. The Warriors — get this — were boring.

Then the second half started, and the Warriors looked like the Warriors again. By the middle of the fourth quarter, they had opened up a 30-point lead.

“Unbelievable speech by me,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said with a smile after the Warriors’ 126-101 win. “The [halftime] speech was so good.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Kerr then admitted. “We just started playing better.”

Behind the turnaround: better defense, fewer turnovers, and as a byproduct of both of those things, more transition baskets.

Oh, and that Kevin Durant guy — he’s pretty good.

Here’s what we learned in the Warriors’ win Wednesday:

Kevin Durant is dominating at the rim

Kevin Durant had three dunks and three blocks on Wednesday, and frankly, it all seemed a bit too easy for him.

Just watch these. Videos. It’s silliness how long he is.

He looks like he needs up his difficulty level in NBA 2K.

How is this guy not considered the best player in the NBA today?

Jordan Bell is out here stealing everyone’s minutes

Every game, it seems as if Jordan Bell is becoming more and more comfortable with the NBA game.

You can see the evolution of a modern NBA big man in real time.

It’s really quite a sight to behold.

It’s not so great for JaVale McGee and Kevon Looney, though — the better Bell becomes, the fewer minutes they play.

On Wednesday, Bell played 21 minutes. McGee, who used to own the second-half of the first quarter rotation minutes — since ceded to Bell — was relegated to 4:29 of mop-up duty.

The interesting wrinkle was that Looney was relegated to full-on mop-up duty as well.

I’d venture to say that is going to be the new normal for the Warriors — a big reason why McGee is expendable and on the trade block.

Here’s how I see the Warriors’ center rotation playing out under ideal circumstances:

Zaza Pachulia is in the starting role — though Kerr said before Wednesday’s game that while he likes starting Pachulia, that’s not locked in, should matchups dictate more small ball (like against Cleveland) — and he’s going to play the first six minutes of the first quarter.

After that, Bell comes in and plays the second-half of the first.

David West then starts the second quarter and plays roughly six minutes — Bell comes in and plays the second-half of the second quarter.

The third quarter, Pachulia is back in — Bell spells him after six-or-so minutes.

The fourth quarter is a repeat of the second — West starts the frame and Kerr either ends with the Hamptons Five (Green at center) or Bell gets another six minutes.

In the end, Pachulia plays 12 to 15 minutes, West plays 12 to 15 minutes, and Bell plays 20 to 25 minutes. Maybe Looney sneaks in there if there’s some foul trouble.

That’s it. Those are all the minutes.

It’s been a pretty incredible season for Bell, who has a season net-rating of 17.6 (absurd) and is averaging 22.5 minutes, 7.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 1.3 blocks per game over his last 10 contests (the length of time Stephen Curry has been out).

There are two big keys to Bell’s increased playing time: he’s becoming far more comfortable handling the ball away from the basket on offense and he’s figured out how to block shots on defense.

First, the blocked shots: Warriors coach Steve Kerr put the difference between blocking shots and being called for a foul on a block attempt in simple, easy-to-understand terms Wednesday:

“Early in the season, he was swiping down — he would go up to the rim and he’d swipe down. It’s an automatic foul if you swipe down in the NBA,” Kerr said. “If you keep your hands up, it’s automatically not a foul… even if you’re drifting and bumping into the guy’s body… So once he got past the swiping down and just starting holding his hands high, he became a devastating rim protector, because — boy — it’s hard to shoot over the top of that guy, he’s so high up in the air.”

And as for his comfort with the ball in his hands on the offensive end — that’s been a trial by fire: teams are blitzing the ballhandler when Bell is setting screens, daring the Warriors to pass the rookie the ball, leaving him to spearhead a 4-on-3 (á la Draymond Green).

On Wednesday, the Jazz were happy to blitz, and Bell had seven assists and only one turnover.

Bell has always possessed tremendous court-vision and passing ability, but it’s now being put to the test inside the Warriors’ offense and it’s leading to points.

Ok, ok, the Draymond Green similarities are getting eerie now.

“You either have it or you don’t — I don’t think it’s possible to teach somebody vision and awareness,” Kerr said. “You can show them patterns, which is what we do with JB. NBA patterns: everyone really runs the same stuff and you see similar actions and you see similar concepts, and so he’s figuring out those concepts, but his feel and his athleticism, combined make for all these great opportunities, either for himself or for his teammates.

“A lot of teams are blitzing the screen when he’s setting it and he’s getting the ball in the pocket and he’s got a lot of options,” Kerr continued. “He’s made some good plays and he’s made some bad ones, but he’s feeling it and he’s starting to see all those pictures.”

Patrick McCaw is getting aggressive

The sophomore guard’s season has been up-and-down, to say the least, but he parlayed a strong performance against the Cavs on Christmas Day into back-to-back good games Wednesday — McCaw had seven made field-goals (none more spectacular than his oops-alley-oop from Andre Iguodala) in 20 minutes.

“He’s a young player, so he’s going to be up and down. Scoring is sort of third or fourth on his list. In his own mind, I think, he’s a distributor and a defender. Scoring is sort of a secondary thought for him,” Kerr said. “We’re trying to get him as aggressive as possible — he plays his best when he’s looking to score like he did tonight.”

Indeed, McCaw was a force on Wednesday, making a big impact on the game during critical stretches.

The Warriors’ love McCaw’s defensive intensity and switchability — if he can maintain this offensive mindset, not only will he see major minutes for the rest of the season, he’s also going to get paid as a restricted free agent in the offseason.

Big third quarters are still the Warriors’ calling card

It had been a bit since the Warriors used a big third quarter to blow an opponent out of the water.

It had been so long that I almost forgot that was the prevailing theme, in many ways, of the first third of the season.

But the big third quarter was back on Wednesday, as the Warriors, as aforementioned, outscored a shellshocked Utah by 20 points in the opening frame of the second half.

“They’re the best team in the league in the third quarter. We talked about it,” Jazz coach Quit Snyder said. “We didn’t turn it over, but we had some breakdowns. We weren’t focused on doing our job and they’re a team that if you make a mistake, they’ll make you pay.”

Again, and again, and again, it seemed on Wednesday.

The Warriors were relentless in the third, particularly with the lineup of Durant, Iguodala, Bell, McCaw, and Young.

In the final four minutes of the third, the Warriors outscored the Jazz by 11 points, opening up their largest lead of the game to that point (21) with a 17-6 run.

The Warriors ran their lead up to 30 in the fourth, but the game ended with that run.

Andre Iguodala doesn’t have to score to make a huge impact

Do you know how hard it is to make a big impact on a game, with a plus-22 rating to back up that eye test, and only score 3 points?

It’s extremely hard.

But that’s what Iguodala did on Wednesday.

Iguodala was a woeful 1-of-7 from the floor against the Jazz — you already saw his missed shot that was totally a pass — but he did have seven assists and was a surgeon in transition.

These back-to-back passes were particularly wicked. The first damn-near killed McGee.

Iguodala’s impact on the Warriors has shown up in so many deft ways with Curry out of the lineup — whether it’s his defensive abilities, his ability to calm the team down, or his ability to devastate an opponent in transition, the box score doesn’t tell even half of the story for Iguodala.