Warriors believe offense will get going,
Golden State eager to start Finals rally
“We’re better than this.”
From a downtown steakhouse late Tuesday to their practice Wednesday, the Golden State Warriors players and coaches who trail LeBron James and the undermanned Cleveland Cavaliers 2-1 in the NBA Finals kept spreading that motivational message.
The anger grew, as did the impatience. They can’t wait to take the floor again in Game 4 on Thursday, to show the basketball world why their 67-win regular season wasn’t a fluke and why they have no interest in the infamy that surely will come if they fall short.
And Klay Thompson, of all people, is more than willing to lead the way.
Of all the Warriors, the All-Star shooting guard and fellow Splash Brother to MVP Stephen Curry is the last one you’d expect to become a vocal leader. The 25-yearold is notorious for his stoic nature, for the easygoing way in which he rolls through life. Yet when the group of more than 100 Warriors-related folks met at Morton’s for the gathering that went until 2 a.m. for some, Thompson’s head had never left Quicken Loans Arena.
“It was good to see family and stuff, but you still could see that we just didn’t feel good last night,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “It just felt (expletive). I’m just so pissed. Aaaah! It just doesn’t feel good man. That’s why I can’t wait to get out there.”
As headline-material goes, Thompson’s has come closest to qualifying as a prediction. After the Cavs’ 96-91 win in Game 3 in which they led by as many 20 points, he declared, “If we get our offense back, we’re going to win this series.” But it wasn’t a moment of brashness as much as it was a cold-hard fact, one he expounded on a day later.
“We’re just going to play with a type of hunger that hopefully you haven’t seen this series, man,” he said. “The hunger we played with when we were down 20, and that urgency, that’s what we need to do from the get-go. We can’t play at their pace, we’ve got to force the tempo, to be the aggressors. We’ve got to impose our will, to have everyone make a big impact as far as helping out Steph, because people are saying, ‘He’s missing shots, blah, blah, blah. But it’s not all him. They’re trying to do everything they can to take him out of the game, so we’ve got to help him. Everybody else has to step up.”
But as was the case in the second-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies in which Golden State trailed 2-1 before winning the final three games, we have seen this team rally before. Thompson was the first to say that talk is cheap, but the talk was telling nonetheless. The Warriors are clearly hurting, well aware of what’s at stake and determined to fix it before it’s too late.
“In the earlier rounds, you have the day to yourself; you get the liberty to decide how you’re going to spend your day,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “So that day in Memphis, we didn’t even go to a gym. We just went to a ballroom and watched the tape for two hours. Tougher to do that now, because of all of our obligations here, coming over to the gym.”
Making matters worse, the Cavs went long on their film session and — upon arrival — the Warriors were greeted with news there was a potential delay.
To the Warriors, it was nothing more than a painful waiting game before the game itself would arrive. If they want this story to change again, they’ll have to prove what they believe to be true: They’re better than this.
“I think collectively we were all really pissed off as a team,” Thompson said. “And this anger we have right now, we’ve just got to bring it to the court tomorrow and play pissed and play like we haven’t played yet and show the world that there’s a reason we were the best team in the league this year.”