Warriors gave fans reason to believe
SAN FRANCISCO » First impressions matter, and, my goodness, the first impression the Warriors made this postseason — which might just double as the first true impression this team, three stars finally tow after three years, made this season — was powerful. Remember the effort we spent trying to come up with a nickname for the smallball, threeguard lineup the Warriors debuted in Game 1 vs. the Denver Nuggets?
Would it be a pun on Jordan Poole’s name after he played like an All-Star to start the series?
No, perhaps it would be a play on the old “Death Lineup” from the Warriors’ first title in 2015. Something new altogether? By the time the series ended, with the Warriors only dropping one game but playing in three slug-it-out contests with the Nuggets to end the tie, the notion of a lineup nickname felt childish.
Playoff basketball is tough and physical. And while any win in that environment is worth celebrating, after Game 5’s series-clinching win, it sure seemed as if the Warriors’ main emotion wasn’t joy, but relief.
What a change in tone from that first impression.
“To be honest, for three quarters, our main guys, Steph, Draymond, Klay, maybe they had forgotten a little bit about how difficult it is to close out a series,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after Game 5.
“Tonight was just a weird feeling because we had not been there in a while. Again, we wanted it so bad. Kind of made it a lot more difficult on ourselves,” Curry said.
Indeed, the Warriors showed their best and their worst in their first-round win over the Nuggets.
And looking forward to the second round and, the Warriors’ hope, beyond, it’s hard to imagine what happens next for Golden State.
If it was merely rust that was in the way of the Warriors eliminating the Nuggets in an expedient and ruthless manner, then the Warriors could well go back to looking like the world-beaters we saw in the first two games of the postseason.
But they might just be another team in these parity-defined playoffs, albeit with some serious and enviable experience with their stars.
The Warriors were a little bit of both was fine against Denver. Maybe that dichotomy will be good enough in the second round, too — Memphis and Minnesota are both young teams whose first-round series shows how little they know about playoff basketball.
But at some point, the Warriors’ penchant for fouling and capriciousness with the basketball that we saw throughout the regular season and again in the final three games of the Denver series will catch up to them.
And it’s frustrating because we saw the Warriors be so much more to start his postseason.
While no player is immune from scrutiny and it takes a full team to win playoff games, the Warriors’ ceiling as a team is set not by Curry, Thompson, or Green, but rather by Poole, the 22-year-old guard in his third year in the league and first year as someone with staying power.
Poole was spectacular in the first three games of this series — a driving force between two blowout wins and a fourthquarter closeout in Game 3.
In Game 4, the Nuggets threw size at him and he struggled.
More size came in Game 5 and Poole finished with eight points and five fouls.
In future rounds, the Warriors can’t afford a mercurial Poole. His offensive output doesn’t have to be like his namesake for the Bulls, but it can’t be Kerr’s Chicago years, either.
With Poole playing like, arguably, the NBA’s most improved player, the Warriors are perhaps the team to beat in the Western Conference.