Post Game Decompression Chamber
Post Game Decompression Chamber
Small sample size theatre bites Warriors as Celtics get real hot in 4th
Things were going great for the Golden State Warriors. Stephen Curry launched out of the gate with maximum firepower engaged, setting a new NBA Finals all time record by scoring 21 points in the 1st quarter. The Boston Celtics clawed back with a balanced scoring attack, and a defense that slowly ratcheted up the pressure. As the teams entered halftime, it was anyone’s game.
The second half was weird.
First, in the third quarter, the Warriors absolutely blitzed the Celtics, hopping out to a big lead on the back of a 38 to 24 point 3rd quarter. Classic Warriors, right?
But in the playoffs, where small sample size theatre rules all, the Boston Celtics got real hot and ran away with it. More than doubling up Golden State, Boston put a nail in it with a 40-28 fourth quarter. Boston shot over 50% from beyond the arch as a team tonight; 21 of 41, good for 51.2%. Ouch.
This was a crushing loss.
It felt well in hand, and then suddenly: way out of hand. The Celtics won’t always shoot this well, but the Warriors just got slapped in the face with a dueling glove. This was a painful loss, but not one of those “toss out the tape and move on” kind of losses. Golden State will need to go back and figure out exactly what went wrong. The shots fell, but there were also a whole lot of nice, open opportunities for Boston.
Dubs in six is still on the table though. See you all Sunday for game two.
Whew. That was a doozy. I was absolutely shocked, and being down 0-1 in your own building sucks. It’s early though, and we’ve shown we can get better as series go on. Still have faith in these guys to get the job done and not let some variance stop them.
I don’t expect the Celtics to shoot the lights out like that again, but we definitely need to not sag off as much as we did on the role players, percentages be damned.
I know it wasn’t part of the strategy, but would it make more sense to let Tatum and Brown get theirs but tire themselves out?
I think Boston’s too good out there to have two-three non shooters on the floor, especially when Jordan or Dray are our primary ball handlers. I like what was suggested (can’t remember if it was Jack or bobbita/Beli) who suggested matching Looneys minutes with Robert Williams, and get as many minutes out of OPJ as we can at the 4 or 5.
I don’t even mind having Moody in there as long as we have some combo of our vet wings out there with Dray or Steph.
For anyone who was there, was GP2 shooting the ball in warmups? I read that supposedly he was not.
The talk leading up to this series focusing on the Celtic defense now feels like a misdirection to me (and I got swept into that as well). The Warriors need to find an answer for the offense the Celtics can generate when Horford plays center. If they can, they can definitely still win the series. Much easier said than done if GP2 is on the shelf imo, sometimes there is no adjustment (like the Mavs found out) but hopefully Kerr has something up his sleeve.
Lot of series left though. I explicitly recall people saying the Warriors/Rockets series was over after the Warriors took Game 1 on the road, but the Rockets got up 3-2 and had double digit leads in Games 6 and 7 so that was definitely wrong. Hell, technically we've even recently seen the Clippers lose both home games against the Mavericks to go down 2-0 but still end up winning in 7. It's very possible that the Warriors have more legs than the Celtics the deeper this series goes if they can just get it to 2-2 after the first four games.