Biggest moment awaits
Warriors looking for answers at home for Game 7
CLEVELAND—The level of tension is growing rapidly for the Golden State Warriors. Someone gets suspended, someone gets hurt, someone gets ejected, and lots of someones make no effort to hide their frustration. A comfortable two-game lead in the NBA Finals becomes a dicey onegame lead, then no lead at all.
The biggest moment awaits. The biggest challenge does, too. Shots aren’t falling for the Warriors at the same rate they were in the regular season, stops aren’t coming like they were a couple months ago either, the aches and pains are piling up and what looked like a sure-fire title not long ago is at best a shaky proposition now. Game 7 of the finals is on Sunday against the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Golden State is hoping being at home helps deliver a championship-saving elixir.
“The playoffs haven’t been easy,” Warriors guard Stephen Curry said. “So, yeah, it’s frustrating, but the work we’ve put in and the opportunity we’ve given ourselves with a Game 7 to win the finals at home, you’ve got to be excited about that.”
The Warriors got questions for months—starting around December, believe it or not—about whether they were concerned that the strain of chasing Chicago’s 72-win mark that stood as the NBA’s gold standard for 20 years would leave them ailing or fatigued at playoff time.
Questions like those seem a bit more valid now.
To be clear, Andrew Bogut’s left knee didn’t become susceptible to seasonending bone bruises because of how difficult becoming the league’s first 73-win regular-season team was. Curry’s combination of fouling out, mouthpiece-throwing and getting ejected in Game 6 on Thursday night wasn’t because the first 82 games left him tired and cranky.
But it can be argued that even though the Warriors spent about half the season without head coach Steve Kerr while he recovered from back surgeries and got every opponent’s best shot in every game, the playoffs have delivered more challenges in 20-something games than the first 82 offered combined.
“I think if you start out every season and you say ‘We get a Game 7, we get one game at home to win the NBA championship,’ I’ll take it every time,” Kerr said. “Obviously Cleveland has played well the last two games, and we’ve got to play better.”
Kerr got fined $25,000 on Friday for being critical of referees after Golden State’s loss in Game 6, and Curry got fined another $25,000 for throwing his mouthpiece into the stands after fouling out of that game.
If the Warriors—who are still steamed that Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5 because he accrued one too many flagrant fouls in this postseason—find calls more to their liking in Game 7, that’ll be money extremely well spent.