Warriors lose shooting touch, can't quite close the gap to win

No sweep for Golden State, as Denver gets tough at home

Alex 👋 #ThankYouDeebo @dbs408

Nuggets Fan taunting Steph

The Golden State Warriors couldn’t complete the sweep of the Denver Nuggets, and will head back to San Francisco for a Game 5 on Wednesday. Draymond Green was booted from the game after accruing his sixth foul without about two minutes left, and the Warriors just couldn’t quite close the gap despite coming back from a huge first half deficit.

With the game on the line in the closing minutes, and Otto Porter in for Green, the play was supposed to be a lob to Andrew Wiggins (who had been great all game, but especially in the final quarter) — unfortunately, a telegraphed bad pass, and a dialed in Denver defense stalled the Warriors’ hopes.

Rob Lopez @r0bato

Looks like Nikola Jokic knew the Warriors were going to try to have Otto Porter throw one up to Wiggins with Jokic on the bench?

Coach Steve Kerr was asked about that play during his postgame presser, and had this to say:

95.7 The Game @957thegame

Kerr on Otto/Wiggins inbound play: “I would like that play call back, frankly. With 30 seconds, we're thinking a 2 for 1. If we get a 2 for 1 we can tie the game with a chance to win it at the end... If I could do it over again, I’d probably draw up something different.”

There was a lot that went wrong.

For me, it was the shooting that really spelled doom today. Forget about the four missed Curry free throws, the entire team had a rough day on the floor. The squad was only made half their shots (43 of 86) from the field, and went 12-34 from deep (35.3%).

Denver meanwhile finally found their touch, lighting up Golden State’s generally stingy defense. 48.4% from deep (15-31) is going to be tough to beat. Jokic was a beast yet again, putting up 37 points, 8 rebounds, and 6 assists.

On the Warriors’ side, it was Curry (3 of 11 from deep, 10-23 overall) that did the bulk of the missing, but Poole went just 1 for 5 and seems to be getting more and more banged up.

The refs weren’t doing the Warriors any favors either, both Klay Thompson and Draymond Green were picking up some real easy fouls all night. While Green’s final whistle was a clear foul, there was plenty of weirdness; like this offensive foul called on Thompson at the end of the first half:

Chris Montano @gswchris

this is a foul on klay, that is soft af

Curry ramped up to 37 minutes. Jonathan Kuminga made his first appearance. I think there’s going to be some tinkering ahead of game five.

For now, the Warriors get a couple days of rest to figure out how to put the Nuggets away.