Another degree of effort required
To the untrained eye — and I happen to own two of them — all the Warriors had to do to win the NBA championship this year was to carry their regular-season level of play into the playoffs.
Come on, they won 67 games. How much better could they get? How much better did they need to get? Is there a grade higher than A-plus, other than a Jim Harbaugh A-plus-plus?
Well, fellow ignoramuses, that type of thinking is not only dumb, it is sacrilegious.
In basketball, there is a deep and abiding belief in a higher power — a higher level of effort, sacrifice and performance.
After the Warriors won Game 4 of these NBA Finals to tie the series at 2-2, Draymond Green said that his team’s effort level against the Cavaliers in Games 2 and 3 had been high enough to win 67 regular-season games. But in the Finals, all that effort level gets you is two losses.
The Warriors had to find a higher power.
In the Book of Basketball it is written that, verily, a championship quest is not a factory order waiting to be filled by guys driving forklifts. It is found through mystical effort and dedication.
The Warriors found their higher power in Game 4. The sexy story line of that game was head coach Steve Kerr’s radical lineup change. Cool story, and legit, but not the
whole story.
A bigger factor, assistant coach Luke Walton said Saturday, was:
“We competed. And I think the first three games, we hadn’t really adjusted to what it takes and the amount of effort on every possession it takes to win in the NBA Finals.”
It’s more than hard work. We’re talking about climbing to a summit 100 feet above the tippy-top of Mount Everest.
How do you get there? By failing. That’s part of this theological package, a belief that you can’t reach championship heights without getting your butt handed to you on the big stage.
Wayne Gretzky tells of his first NHL Stanley Cup Finals, in 1983. It was Gretzky’s fourth NHL season, he was the league’s MVP, and his super Edmonton Oilers got swept by the Islanders.
As Gretzky trudged off the ice, he glanced into the Islanders’ dressing room. The players looked like the losing side after an epic military battle, battered and bruised and completely spent.
“That’s when I realized what it takes to win a Stanley Cup,” said Gretzky, whose Oilers won the Cup the next season.
Walton had a similar experience. In his fifth NBA season, Walton’s Lakers made the Finals and hung in gamely against the Celtics, before losing the clinching Game 6, 131-92.
“Unfortunately,” Walton said, “it took us getting smacked in Game 6 to really, for myself and I think for some of my teammates, realize what it would take. Obviously, Kobe (Bryant) knew, but we came back the next year and it was a whole different mind-set going through the playoffs and the Finals than it was the year before.”
The Lakers won it all in ’09 and repeated in ’10. Hello, higher power.
Can a team find its highest high without first losing a Finals? Kerr and the Warriors have been hoping to accelerate that mystical learning curve, skip ahead and graduate early.
Game 4 gave them hope. I asked Walton if he saw the light go on.
“It did last game, for sure,” he said. “Now, hopefully, we don’t get a win and get happy and relax a little bit. Every series we’ve played so far in this playoffs, our guys have gotten better as the series has gone on, and they haven’t taken steps back. Once we’ve really got into a series, they’ve done a great job of continuing and playing at that level.”
“Last game, our guys fought and scrapped all game long, and I think that’s why Draymond had a better game, I think that’s why (Andre) Iguodala had a great game. Once you get yourself engaged like that, you don’t have time to think about the pressures of, ‘Wow, I’m playing in the NBA Finals!’ You’re so locked in and scrapping that you just let your game and your skills come out.
“Draymond gave a heartfelt speech at the shootaround, there was a whole ’nother level of focus on their faces. It was all these little things that you could see clicking in, that we as a coaching staff were hoping was going to carry into the game, and it did. It was the most we’ve competed in the Finals, by far.
Walton and other wise men know that the fine print in the Good Book of Hoops sayeth that there is no guarantee that the higher power, once attained, is automatically re
tained. It’s a slippery sucker. The Cavaliers are learning, too. Game 5 will be a whole ’nother quest.