Christmas Day loss was a gift
Cavs eked out a win Dec. 25, but Warriors ‘almost unbeatable’ after
YOAKLAND, Calif. ou can have all the talent in the world, but if the talent can’t play together, it’s a moot point.
The Golden State Warriors became the easy team to pick to win it all last July when Kevin Durant joined the team via free agency.
Already a 73-win team and coming off a heartbreaking NBA Finals in which they coughed up a 3-1 series lead, the Warriors seemed to have it all — talent, depth and motivation to spare. Adding Durant was almost overkill.
But in the series-clinching game, it took 39 points from Durant and 10 more from Draymond Green, who didn’t play in Game 5 a year ago. Still, the Warriors only won by nine points.
Golden State needed every piece it had.
That particular narrative, that meshing an alpha talent like Durant with an established team of dominant personalities, is laughed at by head coach Steve Kerr, the guy responsible for bringing it all together.
“I’m not sure there was really that much of a story about our guys not being able to coexist,” Kerr said after leading the Warriors to a second title and third Finals appearance in three years. “I think there’s just a lot of space to fill. I mean, come on — you’ve got a bunch of guys who are talented and can shoot and pass and dribble, and they’re unselfish. There was never any question in my mind that this was going to work.”
Kerr is nothing if not modest, and that may be part of it, but listening to the men involved, the likes of Durant himself and Steph Curry and Draymond Green, there was definitely some adjusting that went on through the season.
Green points to a Christmas Day loss in Cleveland as the turning point when everything just fell into place. In the 109-108 loss to the Cavaliers, Curry was just four of 11 from the field for a modest 14 points. It all changed after that.
“Steph definitely took a back seat to the start the season until he realized we didn’t need him to take a back seat,” Green said. “We need you to be aggressive as you’re going to be, and when Steph turned that corner, I think it was after Christmas Day when he turned that corner, we became almost unbeatable.
“That’s what we needed,” Green added. “So that was this whole thing: Who is going to take less shots? Is it going to be Steph, K.D., Klay? None of them. The ball’s going to find who it needs to find at the end of the day, and that’s those three guys, and we need them guys to shoot the ball and score for us, and they did that.”
Curry admitted he struggled initially with a top-five talent being added — not because he was upset at losing shots, but because he was trying to make everyone else comfortable at his expense.
“Honestly, after that Christmas Day game, I kind of understood that we have such high-IQ players that if I could be aggressive, do what I do and need to do every single night, everything will kind of flow from that,” Curry said. “I think the proof is obviously in what we were able to accomplish from that point on in the regular season, being 16-1 in the playoffs, everybody being the best version of themselves and putting all the puzzle pieces together.”
General manager Bob Myers seemed to suggest Curry still sacrificed even after the Christmas Day revelation, but did so because it made sense.
“Kevin’s journey, our team embraced him,” Myers said. “Some teams wouldn’t embrace a guy who came into a situation like ours.
“It looks like it was easy, but guys like Steph Curry welcoming him and kind of let him shine — it worked out like it should. If you want to win, it doesn’t matter. It’s not about who scored what. It’s about winning. I think (Curry) knew that. He won a championship, and then we were close and didn’t win one, so you have a clear sense of what matters when you go through that stuff.”
In the end, everyone got what they wanted. Durant and fellow veterans Matt Barnes, David West, JaVale McGee and Zaza Pachulia got their first titles after a combined 56 seasons.
“We went through, for lack of a better term, basketball hell, in that sense of just being so close to getting the job done and not realizing that goal and having to think about that for an entire year and compartmentalize and just try to keep the right perspective about this season and learn the lessons that we learned,” Curry said.
Kerr can say it was easy, but that’s just Kerr being modest.
“There was never any question in my mind that this was going to work.” — Steve Kerr