Warriors dig deep to pull out series opener
Spurs blow 25-point lead as Kawhi leaves with injury and Curry, Durant spark Golden State comeback
There are holes and then there are holes, and the hole the Warriors dug themselves into – or were thrown into by the San Antonio Spurs – in Sunday’s Western Conference series opener was the Black Hole of Calcutta at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
This was more than just a game. The Warriors’ dynasty flashed before their eyes as the plucky Spurs roared to a 25-point lead.
For the Warriors, a loss Sunday would have been huuuge, with a capital U. Much more than just a loss. Lose to the shorthanded and hobbled Spurs, on your home court, with all the experts and oddsmakers expecting you to dominate all the way to the Larry O’Brien Trophy, would have been a crushing, demoralizing blow.
A case could be made that a Warriors loss Sunday would have put them in the biggest hole they’ve experienced during their three-season run under head coach Steve Kerr. And they’ve been in some doozies, like last year’s 3-1 hole against Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals.
This is a Warriors team that has to win it all or be a laughingstock, and to win it all, it has to win the West. On Sunday, the Warriors stumbled out of the gate like Thunder Snow at the Kentucky Derby.
The Spurs, remember, are no ordinary opponent. They are coached by the Evil Doctor Popovich, who invariably has something up his sleeve, who plays chess while you’re playing tic-tac-toe. Popovich and his Spurs are backed by two decades of crazy-high excellence. They were coming off one of the most dominant playoff wins ever, a 114-75 rout of the Houston Rockets.
The mighty Warriors, after eight straight playoff wins, and a devastatingly good endof-season finish, were suddenly vulnerable.
Early in the third quarter, Golden State co-owner Joe Lacob sat hunched over at courtside, dazed. His fiancée on his right held his hand – or felt for a pulse. A pal sitting to his left massaged Lacob’s back. They were cornermen working over a dazed fighter, hoping he’d be able to answer the bell.
Had the Warriors lost this one, instead of being light years ahead of the rest of the league, they would have been in their first bit of playoff trouble this year.
If you missed it, tragedy was averted. The Warriors pulled out Game 1 113-111.
For the first time in a couple of months, the Warriors and their fans got tension and high drama. There has been chatter in the media about how boring the playoffs have been, and Warriors fans, though they enjoy a 20-point win like a good cigar, don’t really come alive until their team is tested. Sunday, tested. “It was actually a perfect Game 1,” forward Draymond Green said after playing an imperfect Game 1 (a triple-single). “You get punched in the mouth, but yet you can still get the win. Now we can come out in Game 2 on edge, knowing how good this team is. The [Spurs) just came off something real, where they had to fight in order to take control of that series. Ours was a little lighter than that.”
In winning 23 of their previous 24 games, the Warriors got soft. When you win eight playoff games in a row by an average of 16.5 points, it’s easy to start thinking you’re pretty good.
The Warriors’ wake-up call came late, but it came. The comeback Sunday was led by Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. When a crew of Warriors flew to East Hampton, New York, almost a year ago to woo Durant, Sunday’s second half was exactly what they envisioned: two superstars harmonizing like Simon and Garfunkel.
Much of the season has been an awkward pas de deux between Curry and Durant. Too often theirs was a jazz performance with the two great players taking turns at solo.
On Sunday, the two had moments of brilliance, but there were also times when they were both cogs in a Rolex, blending and meshing.
Now, please avert your eyes if you bristle at the mention of luck in the Warriors’ three-season run of excellence, but it can’t be avoided. The Spurs don’t carry spare superstars the way the Warriors do; they have one, Kawhi Leonard, and they lost him in the third quarter when they were leading by 23. After that point? Warriors, 58-33.
But part of the Warriors’ greatness is that they are so stocked with superstars, they’ve got ’em contributing from the locker room. Kerr watched Sunday’s game on TV from backstage, contributing pregame wisdom and a halftime talk. When the Warriors were stumblin’ and fumblin’, Kerr might have spiked the TV into the whirlpool, but he was there for his players.
Further down the playoff road, Sunday’s win might fade in importance, but right now, the Warriors are breathing one hell of a sigh of relief.
(San Francisco Chronicle/TNS)