Dazzling quarter shows Warriors’ ceiling
For much of the third quarter of Sunday night’s 107-88 win over the Celtics in Game 2 of the NBA Finals at Chase Center, the Golden State Warriors made the complex look simple.
When Golden State is at its best like this, it plays with such precision, teamwork and joy that the Chase Center fans might wonder whether they are witnessing some of the most beautiful basketball played. It’s only fitting, then, that a quarter loaded with check-your-phone-and-miss-it sequences ended with the type of absurd highlight that was once the dynastic Warriors’ signature.
With the clock winding down, guard Jordan Poole crossed midcourt, laced a dribble between his legs and, while blanketed by guard Payton Pritchard, spotted up from 39 feet. As the ball swished through the net to beat the buzzer, Poole highskipped and, straight-faced, tilted his head slightly as if to say, “So what?”
Just as Poole was breaking into a smile, he locked eyes with teammate Stephen Curry, who still appeared stunned by what he had just seen. For much of the game, Poole had struggled with the Celtics’ physicality as he blew rotations and missed shots. Finally, after his teammates put together a third-quarter blitz that could go down in the annals of NBA history, Poole was adding to the party.
By the time he sank that near-halfcourt heave, the Warriors had used nearconstant motion, relentless defense and a Curry flurry to turn a two-point halftime lead into a 23-point cushion. What made this memorable was that Golden State followed that with a worthy fourth quarter. Three nights after they let a 12-point lead evaporate into a 12-point loss, the Warriors maintained their intensity late and cruised to a win.
“It was definitely an attitude adjustment,” said forward Draymond Green, whose Warriors flew to Boston on Monday with the series tied at 1-1. “We knew we had to keep the foot on the gas pedal and not let up. That’s what we did.”
The Celtics will review video and try to make necessary adjustments, but nothing they do might matter if the Warriors continue to play like they did in that third quarter. For 12 minutes, Golden State exhibited all the fundamentals of the game — defense, dribbling, passing, shooting — as it toyed with the toughest opponent it has faced this postseason.
And as is often the case when the Warriors thrive, Curry was at the center of it all. Fourteen of his game-high 29 points came in that third quarter. Late in the period, Curry crossed midcourt, curled around a screen, saw an opening and launched a high-arcing 3-pointer.
As the ball sailed through the net, he sauntered backward and hardly flinched.
“Steph was breathtaking in that quarter,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said. “Not just the shot making, but the defensive effort. He just doesn’t get enough credit for his level of conditioning, physicality and defense.
“People go at him to try to wear him down because they know how important he is to us offensively, and it’s pretty dramatic the difference in Steph’s strength and physicality in his body now than from eight years ago when I first got here. The guy’s amazing.”
With Curry now well above average defensively, the Celtics often have no obvious player to target on pick-androlls. They shot 4-for-17 from the field (2-for-8 from 3-point range) in that third quarter.
After Boston forward Jayson Tatum hit a 3-pointer midway through the period to cut his team’s deficit to six, the Warriors unleashed a 19-2 run. The final thirdquarter tally — Golden State 35, Boston 14 — marked the Warriors’ best point margin in any quarter in the Finals in franchise history.
Some might consider Sunday the continuation of a trend, given that Golden State made dominant third quarters a habit during its three recent championship runs. And that is fair. The Warriors entered Sunday averaging 29 third-quarter points in these playoffs, which are the most of any team to escape the first round.
But Golden State has been slightly better in the fourth quarter, in which it is averaging 30.1 points. This bodes well for a team trying to render that fourth-quarter collapse in Game 1 meaningless.
If the Warriors showed anything Sunday, it’s that they don’t have just a chance in these Finals — they should probably be favored. Even the Celtics at their peak aren’t as dynamic as Golden State was in that third quarter.
“Not much was said at halftime,” center Kevon Looney said. “It was just, ‘Keep executing, keep limiting the turnovers and keep playing with that same force. Keep playing our style of basketball.’
“I think we did that to start the third quarter. … Steph got some open looks, and we were able to just feed off our defense.”