Another chance, another win.
The Golden State Warriors handled a pesky Portland Trail Blazers team on the strength of a strong second half.
There's a 10th straight double digit home win for the Warriors. They're 17-2. Beat the Blazers by 15. All five starters in double figures: Curry 32, Wiggins 25, Poole 14, Looney 12, Draymond 12.
Even short handed, Golden State was just too much for Portland to handle. Great win!
As always, this is just a quick thread for our community, full coverage will resume in the morning.
The recent dominant play of the Warriors is a great reminder of just how tragic the end of last season was.
Chemistry aside, the starting lineup down the stretch was.... better than this year's??? Despite his tremendous improvement, Poole was deemed a defensive liability and came off the bench for Bazemore. Otherwise it's the same lineup!
Few would argue that Mulder and Baze make up for BJelly, OP3 and Andre, but Mulder was a reliable 3 point shooter who learned to fit in well in the rotation.
And lurking in the final slot, recovering from injury and waiting for his Finals emergence was.... GP2!
The Warriors went down to the defending champs' house, played them dead even and lost on a Lebron 30 footer as the shot clock ran out while he said he was "seeing three baskets" due to an eye-poke.
Keep in mind the Warriors played them dead even on the road WITH Anthony Davis.
In round 1 the Lakers split in Phoenix and were up 2-1 over the Suns when Davis went down. There's every reason to believe the Lakers would have repeated with Davis.
Hard to know how much the Memphis loss was due to over-exertion in the Laker game.
(And of course, were it not for COVID rules the Warriors wouldn't even have been in that backs-to-the-wall situation.)
Given the Warriors' earlier defeats of Phoenix, Utah, and Milwaukee, I think there's every reason to think they could have challenged for the title.
Could the LOLakers hire M Jackson please.