By Jeremy Harness

It’s often said that when you’re defending a championship, every team is going to take its best shot at you. The Phoenix Suns did just that to the Warriors Saturday night.

Once again, the Warriors responded like champions, overcoming a late lead and coming away with their 59^th win of this amazing season, a 123-116 victory over the Suns at Oracle Arena that showed exactly the kind of mettle a team needs in order to be championship-caliber.

Stephen Curry led all scorers with 35 points, and after being saddled by early foul trouble, got his game going in the second half, particularly in the final five minutes that the Warriors used to erase the deficit and then run away from Phoenix.

Marreese Speights, known around here as Mo’ Buckets, showed how he got that nickname in a short period of time Saturday. He scored 25 points in only 17 minutes on the court, making 10 of his 14 shots from the floor and also pulled down nine rebounds.

The Warriors led by four at halftime, but the Suns refused to go away quietly in the second half. In fact, Phoenix took a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter, thanks to the hot shooting of Brandon Knight, who made 7 of his 12 shots from 3-point territory en route to a 30-point outing.

However, the Warriors clamped down on defense and got their offensive game going in the final quarter to put the young Suns away.

Saturday marked the busiest week of the season for the Warriors, playing five games in the past seven days, and it doesn’t get much easier next week.

The Warriors have New Orleans and New York in the next two home games, but then they go to the state of Texas to take on the Mavericks on Friday in Dallas, where they have one of their six losses this year, before heading to San Antonio the next day to face the Spurs, who won a thriller Saturday night over Oklahoma City to remain only 3 ½ games behind the Warriors in the Western Conference.