Warriors channel the Kings in Game 4
Can't happen again if team expects to win the NBA title
SAN FRANCISCO >> The Warriors and Grizzlies went from hurting each other to hurting the rim.
They went from disrespecting The Code to disrespecting The Game.
And the Warriors went from championship contenders to the Kings.
Thank goodness Steph Curry stepped in when he did in Monday's Game 4, scoring 18 points in the fourth quarter to lift the Dubs to a win and a 3-1 series lead with a 10198 scoreline that almost made the contest look respectable.
But the Warriors' Game 4 win should not be lionized.
This wasn't a case of “championship DNA” separating Golden State in the final moments of the contest. There was nothing gritty, gutsy or special about it. Yes, the Warriors “won ugly” but that should not be considered a compliment in this circumstance.
Everything about Game 4 was nasty.
For all those folks claiming that this series and its physicality was better suited for the 1980s and 90s, you received equally appropriate shooting performances from both teams.
Monday's contest was a
game that was played to be forgotten.
Now it's on the Warriors to make sure that it is.
Because, despite the win, the Warriors didn't look anything like a championship contender Monday.
For 98 percent of the contest, they looked unserious. They looked lifeless. They looked hapless.
They looked like the Sacramento Kings.
And that's not me slandering the purple and white.
No, that's Curry.
“You talk about historically bad shooting. A lot of history was made,” Curry
told TNT after the game. “I felt like we got traded to the Kings overnight.”
Curry even put on purple shoes in the fourth quarter to honor the team's transformation.
(Curry did try to spin this quote as a “misunderstanding” in his post-game presser. The attempt fell as short as Dillon Brooks' 3-point attempts in this series.)
Or maybe the Warriors looked like another Northern California team, the 49ers. If that was the case, then the Dubs might have been better off pulling George Kittle and Trey Lance out of the front row
of the Chase Center crowd and into the game.
“When we went in
[for halftime] Chris DeMarco [assistant coach] says `Punch 42. Dive 52… We just kept handing the ball off the fullback left and right and at the end we kicked a field goal to win it,” Warriors assistant coach Mike Brown said.
Regardless, the 49ers haven't won a title in nearly 30 years. The Kings have moved four times since they last won the championship in 1951.
If the Warriors want to win a fourth title in eight years, they might want to play like, well, the Warriors
again.
After the Warriors scored 142 points in Game 3, and with Memphis lacking their best player, Ja Morant, Monday's game should have never been a contest.
Memphis held up its end of the bargain. They had an effective field goal percentage of 44 percent Monday. Woof.
Yet the Grizz led for the first 47-plus minutes of the game.
And while Memphis had an excuse for their poor play, the Warriors did not.
Yes, there was weirdness. Brown — who was hired by the Kings to be their head coach over the weekend — was thrust into an interim head coaching role with the Warriors Monday after Steve Kerr tested positive for COVID. But while I think Kerr's a great coach, but his presence on the sidelines is not worth between 20 and 30 points a night. No sir.
Luckily Curry took over Monday. He went full fullback with 45 seconds to play in a one-point game and drove right at the basket, looking for a foul. He got one.
It was cynical — downright antithetical to the Warriors' style of play, even — but it was also smart. It provided the Warriors with their first lead of the game. Draymond Green's block of Jaren Jackson's 3-pointer sealed the victory.
All of it put the Warriors in a position to clinch this second-round series in Memphis on Wednesday, a game that Morant isn't expected to play.
And with the Suns and Mavericks suddenly tied at 2-2 on the other side of the bracket, the Warriors have a chance to seize control of the Western Conference playoffs once again.
But first, they have to regain control of their good sense and top-flight play.
Much like Curry's foulhunting, the Kings and the playoffs are downright antithetical, so Monday must be the last time the Warriors channel their NorCal neighbors.
They got away with it Monday.
That will be the only time that happens this postseason.