Curry Shines as Warriors Tie Series, Regain Homecourt Advantage
Stephen Curry authored perhaps the best NBA Finals game of his storied career to lead the Golden State Warriors to a 107-97 win over the Boston Celtics. The Warriors not only tied the series at 2-2, but they also reclaimed the homecourt advantage that they lost after dropping game one. Curry scored 43 points on 14-26 field goal shooting while also grabbing 10 rebounds and dishing for four assists. He was one of only three Warriors with a double digit plus/minus number (+11). Curry was consistent throughout the game, scoring 12 first quarter points, seven second quarter points, 14 third quarter points, and 10 fourth quarter points. Curry's scoring outburst is unexpected not because he is incapable of scoring efficiently at a prolific rate, but simply because it is unusual for him to score efficiently at a prolific rate in the NBA Finals, particularly in game four or later.
While Curry is without question this game's headliner and dominant performer, he received significant help from Andrew Wiggins and Kevon Looney. Wiggins scored 17 points while grabbing a career-high 16 rebounds. During this series, Wiggins has often been one of the few Warriors capable of matching up athletically and physically with the Celtics, and his +20 plus/minus number in game four indicates that the Warriors would have struggled to win this game without him. Looney only scored six points, but he had 11 rebounds in 28 minutes, and he led both teams with a +21 plus/minus number. Looney plays in the paint like a traditional big man, and the Warriors figured out that they do not have much chance of winning this series by going small with Draymond Green at center; in game four, Green was again outmatched physically, finishing with two points on 1-7 field goal shooting, though he did offset his anemic scoring to some extent with a very good floor game (nine rebounds, eight assists, four steals). Green's plus/minus number of +0 in 33 minutes reflects the reality that the Warriors did most of their damage in the 15 minutes that he did not ply.
Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole made solid contributions. Thompson scored 18 points on 7-17 field goal shooting, while Poole added 14 points on 6-13 field goal shooting.
The Warriors outrebounded the Celtics 55-42, and they outshot the Celtics from the field, .440 to .400. Most significantly and unexpectedly, the Warriors outscored the Celtics in the paint 38-32 after losing that category 52-26 in game three. The Warriors set an NBA record by winning at least one road game for the 27th straight playoff series.
Jayson Tatum had solid boxscore totals (23 points, 11 rebounds, six assists, +1 plus/minus number), but he squandered too many possessions, shooting just 8-23 from the field while committing six turnovers; Tatum's missed layups and careless ballhandling proved to be very costly for the Celtics. Throughout this series, Tatum has been inefficient with his scoring opportunities at the rim, seeming at times to be more focused on trying to draw a foul than on converting the shot regardless of whether or not the referee will blow their whistles.
Jaylen Brown did his part, scoring 21 points on 9-19 field goal shooting and committing just two turnovers. Robert Williams III scored seven points on 3-3 field goal shooting, grabbed a team-high 12 rebounds, and blocked two shots in 31 minutes. He was the only Celtic other than Tatum with a positive plus/minus number (+6), but he did not get enough help inside from Al Horford (eight points, six rebounds, four assists) and Grant Williams (three points, one rebound in just 13 minutes).
Marcus Smart (18 points on 7-18 field goal shooting) and Derrick White (16 points on 4-12 field goal shooting) missed far too many shots, and they had the worst plus/minus numbers in this game (-17 and -19 respectively).
Golden State's 10 point margin of victory obscures the fact that Boston controlled the action for most of the game. Boston jumped out to an 11-4 first quarter lead, and the Celtics were up 54-49 at halftime. The Celtics led for most of the third quarter--withstanding the Warriors' typical surge during that stanza--but the Warriors entered the fourth quarter with a slim 79-78 edge after Curry drained a three pointer to close out the third quarter scoring.
The Celtics have been the better fourth quarter team throughout this series, and they were up 94-90 after Smart's three pointer with 5:18 remaining, but their offense fell apart just short of the finish line as the Warriors went on a 10-0 run. During that key stretch, the Celtics--who enjoy advantages in size and athleticism--did not attempt a single shot from closer than 13 feet, and they missed five straight three pointers. Holding the Warriors to 107 points should be good enough to win, but the Celtics did not convert enough of their defensive stops into high percentage scoring opportunities. Curry's 43 point performance will deservedly receive headlines, but the Celtics would enjoy a 3-1 series lead now despite Curry's heroics if they had scored more efficiently in the paint.
Why should we believe that the Celtics will win this series after losing game four at home? The Warriors are not going to become bigger or more athletic, so their disadvantages in this series cannot be fixed. In contrast, the Celtics are capable of cutting down on their turnovers, improving their clutch time shot selection, and finishing more efficiently in the paint. If the Celtics do those things, they will win game five, and they will win game six as well.
Throughout the playoffs, I have noted that momentum is a myth and I have stated that I am not a commentator who changes his series prediction after every game. I picked the Celtics to win this series in six games and the Celtics are still in position to make that happen; during the 2022 playoffs, the Celtics have not lost two consecutive games and they are 8-3 on the road.
Labels: Andrew Wiggins, Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Kevon Looney, Klay Thompson, Stephen Curry
posted by David Friedman @ 1:46 AM
Bigger, Stronger, Faster Celtics Overwhelm and Outlast Warriors
Anything can happen in a quarter or even in one game, but over the course of a seven game NBA playoff series the bigger, stronger, and faster team will most likely prevail. Three games into the 2022 NBA Finals, it should be obvious which team is bigger, stronger, and faster--namely, the Boston Celtics team that showcased their size, strength, and speed in a 116-100 game three win over the Golden State Warriors to take a 2-1 series lead while maintaining the home court advantage that the Celtics obtained by winning game one on the road. The Celtics dominated the boards (47-31), and they won the points in the paint battle, 52-26. Proponents of "advanced basketball statistics" value three point shooting over two point shooting, but the Warriors got blown out despite making more three pointers (15-13) while shooting a better three point field goal percentage (.375 to .371). Simply put, the Warriors cannot make enough three point shots to compensate for the Celtics' decisive physical advantages.
Jaylen Brown led the Celtics with 27 points on 9-16 field goal shooting. He also had nine rebounds and five assists. Brown did most of his scoring damage in the first quarter (17 points on 6-9 field goal shooting), but his size and skill required significant defensive attention throughout the game, even if no one will credit him with having "gravity." Jayson Tatum added 26 points, a game-high nine assists, and five rebounds. Tatum's "gravity" is even more significant than Brown's, because Tatum's size and skill set leave the Warriors with two unenviable options: cover Tatum one on one, and watch him score 30-plus points on high efficiency shooting, or force Tatum to play in a crowd while leaving his teammates wide open. The Warriors have consistently signed up for the second option, and have thus watched Tatum dissect them with pinpoint playmaking while still contributing as a scorer as well. Marcus Smart scored 24 points on 8-17 field goal shooting while also grabbing seven rebounds and passing for five assists.
The Celtics'
three best perimeter players not only outplayed the celebrated "Splash
Brothers," but they became the first trio to each post a 20-5-5 stat
line in an NBA Finals game since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, and
Michael Cooper accomplished this in game six of the 1984 NBA Finals.
Meanwhile, Robert Williams III scored eight points, ripped down a game-high 10 rebounds, spiked a game-high four blocked shots while looking like Karch Kiraly, and posted a game-best +21 plus/minus number. He looked like a man among boys in the paint at both ends of the court.
Stephen Curry scored a game-high 31 points on 12-22 field goal shooting, but it should be noted that he had two assists, three turnovers, and four fouls. We are told that Curry is one of the top 15 players of all-time,
but we see that in the 2022 NBA Finals the Celtics "hunt" him
defensively like a lion pursuing a lame wildebeest on the Serengeti--and this is not the first time that Curry has played the role of "prey" in such scenarios. The greatest guards of all-time--the guards in my pro basketball Pantheon--are (in chronological order) Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant. Johnson was the worst defensive player of that group, but not only was he not "hunted" like Curry, he was capable of being assigned to guard an elite player: in the 1982 NBA Finals, the Lakers matched the 6-9 Johnson up with Pantheon small forward Julius Erving to try to keep Erving off of the offensive boards. Johnson was an elite rebounder who could capably guard multiple positions.
Klay Thompson scored 25 points, but his 7-17 field goal shooting is not going to concern or bother the Celtics. Thompson was an elite defender prior to his two serious leg injuries, but now he is just a solid defender.
Draymond Green, the Warriors' mouth that roared, went beyond "triple single" status to coin a new statistical category: the straight flush (four rebounds, three assists, two points). If there were an "advanced basketball statistic" depicting an inverse correlation between words spoken and impact created, Green would lead the league in that category by a wide margin. He tells everyone how great he is, how smart he is, and how great his team is, and he hopes that his torrent of words will distract us from the reality that he is overrated. Yes, he is a very good player who can have a positive impact, but at the core he is an undersized power forward who is not a scoring threat and who can be overpowered by any big player who has a modicum of skill. There is no way that Green could be the best player on a playoff team, and no one would have ever heard of him if he had not been blessed to play with multiple All-Star caliber players throughout his career.
From a wider historical perspective, we are getting just a glimpse of
what it would look like if a championship team from the 1980s or 1990s
teleported into the 2022 NBA Finals to face the Warriors: Green is outmatched by Robert Williams III playing on one healthy knee, so it is obvious that Green could not do much versus Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Robert Parish, or Hakeem Olajuwon. Green could not play center against those guys without being embarrassed, and Green would not have fared well versus that era's elite power forwards, either. Kevin McHale once said, quite correctly, that Green "could not grow enough to guard me." McHale also has derisively noted that the "7-11 defense" (a defensive player holding his arms straight in the air as if he is being robbed at a 7-11) never works. Green often had no choice but to play the "7-11 defense" as Williams III outmuscled and outjumped Green for rebounds.
It was also annoying to watch Green bark at the referees after he fouled out; fouling out should not come with a license to endlessly complain, so the referees should have hit Green with a technical foul to encourage him to sit down and shut his mouth. The extent to which the NBA permits Green to run roughshod over their referees is embarrassing. The officiating crews in the NBA Finals graded out as the best of the best during the regular season; letting Green loudly and publicly belittle and berate them gives the impression that the referees are not doing a good job and are also too afraid to exert control over bad player conduct.
Size matters in the NBA, and ABC's Jeff Van Gundy spoke the obvious truth that many commentators refused to acknowledge prior to this series and are still reluctant to admit even now: the Celtics outmatch the Warriors in size and athleticism. Van Gundy suggested that the Warriors should consider altering their lineup and rotations to try to minimize the impact of the Celtics' advantages.
The 2022 NBA Finals are poised to become the series where popular narratives go to die. We are told that Stephen Curry's three point shooting revolutionized the NBA, but the most revolutionary aspect of Golden State's run is not Curry's three point shooting but rather the impact of Kevin Durant fleeing Oklahoma City in 2016 to become a two-time champion/two-time Finals MVP with the Warriors. LeBron James formed a superteam from scratch in Miami in 2010, but Durant did something at least as revolutionary: he left an established elite team to join another established elite team, adding fuel to the "player empowerment" trend. Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Ben Simmons, and James Harden are just a few of the All-Stars who determined that the grass is greener elsewhere and then forced their way onto other teams. This notion of building a team instantly instead of organically is not good for the game; hopefully, the success of the Milwaukee Bucks last season and the Boston Celtics this season will help to end (or least curb) this trend.
Any player analysis that results in the conclusion that Curry is a top 15 player of all-time but the Warriors can replace Durant with Andrew Wiggins without losing anything is, to put it mildly, highly suspicious. Curry is a great player, but he is just not the revolutionary player who he is depicted as being. In my March 2020 article The Evolution of the Usage of the Three Point Shot, Part III, I noted that Curry's Warriors only led the NBA in three pointers made one time (2016) while James Harden's Houston Rockets ranked first in that category five times (2014-15, 2017-19; after I finished that article, Harden's Rockets led the NBA in three point field goals made in 2020 as well). Further, the Warriors never embodied the notion of jacking up three pointers all the time while playing scant attention to defense; the Warriors at their best were always a very good defensive team, while Harden's Rockets were mediocre at best defensively.
Turning our attention back to game three, the Celtics punched the Warriors in the mouth from the start, and they led most of the way. Boston led by as many as 15 points in the first quarter, and the Celtics were up 33-22 by the end of the first stanza. They outshot the Warriors .545 to .348, and they outrebounded the Warriors 16-8.
The Warriors battled back to take an 83-82 lead with 3:45 remaining in the third quarter, but their glory was short-lived, and the Celtics never trailed again after the 3:12 mark of the third quarter. Just prior to taking that brief lead, the Warriors had a seven point possession consisting of a Curry three pointer, a Curry free throw after Al Horford was called for a flagrant foul for not letting Curry land safely, and an Otto Porter three pointer. The Warriors scored almost as many points on that possession as they did in the entire fourth quarter!
Much has been said about the "third quarter Warriors," but it is odd
that so little is being said about the "fourth quarter Celtics": the
Celtics are not only winning the fourth quarters in the 2022 NBA Finals,
but they are leading the series 2-1 in no small part because of their
fourth quarter dominance, so that would seem to be more significant than
whatever the Warriors are doing in the third quarters. Boston won the fourth quarter of game three 23-11 as Curry scored two points on 1-4 field goal shooting and Thompson did not score while missing all three of his field goal attempts. The Warrior's 11 fourth quarter points are the third fewest in an NBA Finals game dating back to the beginning of the shot clock era.
Labels: Boston Celtics, Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Klay Thompson, Marcus Smart, Robert Williams III, Stephen Curry
posted by David Friedman @ 2:54 AM
Warriors Ride Late Third Quarter Run to Blowout Victory
The Boston Celtics won game one of the NBA Finals convincingly and they were within striking distance of a game two victory before the Golden State Warriors hit them with a 19-2 run in the final 4:58 of the third quarter. The Celtics never recovered, and the Warriors won 107-88 to tie the series at one game apiece as the action shifts to Boston for games three and four. The main story of game two was Golden State's excellent defense (or Boston's bad offense, depending on how you view it); the Warriors' offensive efficiency improved little from game one, but Boston's offensive efficiency cratered from 120 points on .506 field goal shooting to 88 points on .375 field goal shooting.
It is not surprising that the Warriors responded to their game one loss by being more energetic and physical in game two, but it is surprising that Draymond Green is permitted to repeatedly throw opposing players to the ground, hit opposing players with forearms and/or elbows aimed above the neck, and instigate confrontations while only being punished with one technical foul. As ABC's Jeff Van Gundy has repeatedly noted, there is a bizarre double standard that works in Green's favor: Green is expected to behave poorly, so he is therefore given a benefit of the doubt that is not given to players who are more mild-mannered. Had another player fouled a three point shooter, landed on top of the shooter, rested his legs on the opposing player, and then grabbed the opposing player's shorts after the opposing player pushed his legs aside--as Green did to Jaylen Brown late in the second quarter--that player would have received a technical foul; unfortunately, because Green was the offender here and he had already received a technical foul, the referees assessed no penalty. Basically, after Green received his first technical foul he had a license to commit any mayhem short of a flagrant foul without being penalized. In the good old days, the game was more physical than this and yet also more sensibly officiated: players had a lot contact when the ball was live, but dead ball contact was not tolerated, and the issuance of a first technical foul was not a license to commit future mayhem but a warning that you are one false step away from being ejected.
If Green behaves in a similar way in a subsequent game and receives an ejection and/or suspension, no one should sympathize with him or the Warriors; Green pushes the envelope deliberately and repeatedly, so he, his team, and his team's fans have to accept the logical consequences of his actions. That is why I dismiss as irrelevant the notion that the Warriors would have won the 2016 NBA Finals if Green had not been suspended for one game during that series: being suspended is a logical consequence of how Green behaves, so if/when he is suspended no one should be surprised or sympathetic. Green and the Warriors apparently believe that the benefits that Green provide outweigh the risks of him being ejected and/or suspended.
I have no problem with the Warriors (or any other team) pressuring the ball, being physical (within the rules) with cutters, and playing with great energy--but much of what Green does is not physical but just cheap (if not dirty). Again, in the gold old days there were ways to deal with such conduct; one way was to put your 10th, 11th, or 12th man in the game, and make sure that he squared off with the offender: maybe the reserve would crack the offender with a hard screen, maybe he would get in his face, but the message would be clear that the offender needed to settle down, or else risk getting caught up in a fracas with a player whose basketball value is minimal.
Instead, in game two the referees gave Green a metaphorical license to kill, and the Celtics seemed puzzled about how to respond; it looked and felt like at a certain point the Celtics just gave in and figured, "We already took home court advantage, and we can finish this series at home even if we don't win game two." I am not suggesting that the Celtics should take that approach or even that they took that approach consciously, but rather I am suggesting that it is human nature to be a bit satisfied with a 1-1 road split as opposed to digging deep to win a second road game against a very determined team.
Stephen Curry led the Warriors in scoring for the second straight game,
netting 29 points on 9-21 field goal shooting, including 5-12 from three
point range. Jordan Poole added 17 points on 6-11 field goal shooting.
Kevon Looney contributed 12 points on 6-6 field goal shooting, plus a
team-high seven rebounds. Looney had a +24 plus/minus number, tying Curry and Otto Porter Jr. (who had just three points in 15 minutes) for game-high honors. Klay Thompson (11 points on 4-19 field goal shooting) and Andrew Wiggins (11 points on 4-12 field goal shooting) were Golden State's other double figure scorers. Green led the Warriors in histrionics while posting yet another "triple single" (nine points, seven assists, five rebounds) with a +7 plus/minus number.
Jayson Tatum topped the Celtics with 28 points on 8-19 field goal shooting, but he had a game-worst -36 plus/minus number, and his scoring total had more empty calories than nourishment, much like Curry's game one performance; both players scored a lot early during their respective big performances, but then disappeared down the stretch when the opposing team blew the game open. Jaylen Brown added 17 points on 5-17 field goal shooting but he was a non-factor in the second half. Derrick White (12 points on 4-13 field goal shooting) was the only other Boston player who scored more than six points. Game one heroes Al Horford and Marcus Smart disappeared in game two, finishing with two points each while combining to commit seven turnovers.
Did the Warriors make some incredible adjustment between games--or at halftime of game two--that changed everything? No; what we saw is the home team play with great desperation to avoid falling into an 0-2 hole, while the road team fought for a while before giving in and setting their sights on game three.
It is amusing to observe the game to game overreactions during an NBA playoff series; when a team wins, commentators act as if there is no way to imagine the other team ever winning another game, and then when the other team bounces back commentators act as if there is no way to imagine the first team ever winning another game. I never expected or predicted that the Celtics would sweep the Warriors, so a Golden State home win does not change my belief that the Celtics are the superior team that will eventually take the series. Frankly, a game two win by the Celtics would have been at least a mild surprise to me, because then the series would be unlikely to last six games, which is how long I expect the series to last. The so-called "momentum" from game two will last about as long and mean about as much as the so-called "momentum" from game one; game three will be a separate entity played in a different venue with a different officiating crew, and it is almost always the case that role players perform better at home than on the road. One trend worth noting is that the Celtics have yet to lose back to back games in the 2022 playoffs.
Labels: Al Horford, Boston Celtics, Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Marcus Smart, Stephen Curry
posted by David Friedman @ 2:07 AM
