Notebook: Iguodala still can’t hit a 3, but he’s contributing in other ways.
Iggy made other plays to contribute despite shooting struggles
OAKLAND — Andre Iguodala can’t make an outside shot to save his life in these playoffs so far, but he can still dunk with the best of them and do all the other things that makes him so critical to the Warriors’ high level of success.
The Warriors needed one of those Iguodala all-around specials Thursday night with ineffective center play and a stubborn Utah Jazz team refusing to go away submissively, and Andre delivered in the 115-104 Game 2 victory at Oracle Arena.
The stats told some of the story with Iguodala, but as usual, not all. He scored 10 points — eight of them on four jams at the rim — and added five rebounds, four assists and a steal over 34 minutes, 10 more minutes than he played in Game 1.
The Warriors needed him for every one of those extra minutes, particularly in the second half when the Jazz cut what had been a 20-point lead at one point to six two minutes into the third quarter. Utah was controlling the pace, but when Iguodala entered to replace center Zaza Pachulia, Golden State promptly went on a 9-0 run and bumped the lead back to 15.
During that run, Iguodala made the play you’re most likely going to see on highlight shows — his whistling behind-the-back pass under the basket to a trailing Kevin Durant for a rousing dunk.
“Draymond (Green) threw a good pass to me and I mistimed the catch, and it should have been a turnover,” Iguodala said. “But I got a good bounce and I saw (Rudy) Gobert there trying to protect the rim. I saw K.D. on my left side but I couldn’t deliver it with the left side of my body, so it was the only route to throw the pass.”
It was a spectacular play, and Iguodala had a few of them on this night, even if his outside shot — and his 3-point shot, in particular — continued to desert him. He was 0 for 3 on shots beyond the arc in Game 2 and is now 0 for 18 on 3-point attempts in the first two rounds.
“I kind of have an idea (what’s going wrong),” he said. “But I think when I haven’t made a 3 in the playoffs, we’ve won, so we’re 6-0. That’s (general manager) Bob Myers just trying to trick my mind a little bit. But when the time’s right, I’m very confident that it will fall. I’m not worried about it.”
Iguodala admitted that when the outside shot isn’t falling, he feels even more instinctive about doing the little things on offense and defense.
“Regardless of whether it’s falling or not, you’ve got to find a way to make an impact on the floor,” he said. “We have a lot of threats on the floor, so it should be easy to try and find a way to be impactful.”
The Jazz was without n starting point guard George Hill, who has been suffering soreness from a big toe sprain.
“It’s a big impact, but one we started with at the beginning of the year,” said Jazz coach Quin Snyder. who opened this season with four point guards on the roster. “We didn’t know how much we would be using all of them. It’s a shared load, and it doesn’t really fall on one guy in particular. George’s shot-making ability is what we miss when he’s not play- ing.”
Shelvin Mack started in place of Hill and scored 14 points with four assists.
If there’s any down n side to the Warriors getting healthy, it’s that rookie Patrick McCaw and veteran Matt Barnes have been relegated to the end of the bench, and it remains to be seen how much time they may see in this series and beyond.
“We play a lot of people,” said acting head coach Mike Brown. “With Shaun (Livingston) and K.D. being back it just kind of pushed Pat back a little bit. Not only that, Matt was playing phenomenal for us when he was out there. It’s just tough to find minutes. As it is right now, we’re playing 10 guys anyway. To play 10 guys in the playoffs is tough and playing 11 or 12 is almost impossible.”
McCaw did in the game in the second quarter for two minutes with the Warriors up by 20. Barnes played just over a minute in the third quarter and hit a buzzerbeating bank shot at the end of the period.