Golden State Warriors won the third quarter of Game 2 of the NBA Finals 35-14. Then, to start fourth on the Steve Curry bench, they scored eight of the first 10 points of the period to run their lead out to 29, and that was it. A one-on-one tie in the final will return to Boston for Wednesday night’s Game 3.
The Celtics narrowly won Game 1 in the fourth quarter, moving away from the two-big lineup that has made their defense so incredibly stingy throughout the season. At the juncture of Game 2, the Warriors seemed to be making a concerted effort to get away with things while their two traditional giants, Al Harford and Robert Williams, were still on the floor in Boston. They brutally attacked those two (and then the more-lumbering Daniel Thiss).
Early in the third half, Thompson catches Harford as his defender when the Celtics meet in transition, and immediately drags him to the Andrew Wiggins screen with a sprinting baseline. Harford could not keep pace with the run or get close to the screen; Wiggins’ defender, Marcus Smart, responded by saying that Thompson had already fired a corner three-pointer. It was the classic Warriors basketball িতে in a previous iteration or against a less organized opponent, they would repeat the action, tempting Thompson or Wiggins’ defenders to expect the screen and sell to Thompson too soon; Wiggins will slip instead of setting the screen, grab the ball as it moves toward the rim, draw a help defender towards it, and kick off a series of light-speed ball rotations against a shredded, scrambling defense, inevitably ending with a slightly shifted Thompson quietly three. Six seconds later a wide-open splash. They will spend the rest of their time against this basic action for every expected and cruel punishment of the opponent’s helpless adjustment, and, well, they will win the quarter by scoring something like 35-14.
They try it! In their very next possession after the Thompson Three, Thompson pulled his defender, this time Jillian Brown, through the same baseline run বার this time towards Harvard man Kevin Looney. The idea was that Harford, who had recently been burned at the stake, would be out to hold Thompson, putting Boston’s defense out of shape, but Harford kept his cool, Brown fought around Looney’s screen and nothing came of it. So, after a kick-ball break, the Warriors moved back to Harford: a series of screens switched him to the top of the key, causing a few set-up dribbles and then a step-back three-pointer. .
It covered the rest of the quarterback, especially after Smart Williams collapsed on his knee a minute later and the next one took a few painful moments to return. Golden State largely excluded the baseline-Gauntlet staff, favoring a simple screen near the top of the key designed to give Harford, Williams or Thisus a way to avoid a curry matchup. When it didn’t go straight into a curry bucket, the open look was nothing more than two solid cuts and clever passes. Curry scored 14 points over time (in more and more daring shots), Drymond Green Curry got a wide-open three by passing a couple from the pick-and-roll and bricked; Auto Porter Jr. got a wide-open corner three from the same thing a few moments later and gave a jerk. Consider a kind of perverted achievement in the Celtics defense: they will prove themselves skilled enough, big and athletic and organized and committed enough to force the Warriors into a more brutal and straightforward version of the template they run. Away with a lot of games in the last seven years.
The Celtics, on the other hand, allow themselves to be persuaded by the patience and force-movement that they used to isolate the Golden State defense during the fourth quarter of Game 1 and most of the first half of Game 2. Chest-to-chest defense of every member of the offensive warriors has done it; Special credit goes to Gary Payton II, who made his series debut on Sunday night and whose availability means he can keep at least one frantic dogged on-ball defender on their backcourt for all 48 minutes of the Golden State game. Boston’s crime has turned into a series of ugly, quick attempts; Unlike the Warriors, who used the discrepancy to unbalance Boston’s defense and find a beautiful look, the impatient Celtics settled for one garbage after another. Derrick White dribbled away a grab; Jayson Tatum, so quietly selfless in Game 1, pushed a grip on a desperate step-back three over tall Andrew Wiggins; Harford dribbled away a possession; Peyton even tried to attack Pritchard Curry, removing most of the possession.
Celtics usually rely on players to sort through the options that they lose faith in their ability to find beautiful looks through passing and moving. The smart shot throws a dribble-drive out of control towards Luni early in the clock; Abstractly, that’s right, a point guard going to the opposing center, but it’s not a smart game, even against the centers it has led far more than Looney, and it led to Williams’ knee and a turnover crash. Brown went one-on-four in transition, determined for a terrible off-balance fall. Things … And the shot clock has 19 seconds left and it pierces the brick. In Boston’s very next takeover, again in a hurry than many of his teammates in transition, Brown tried an openly ridiculously destroyed ali-op lob near Harford, 36, the results of which you might expect. And so, when the Warriors cruis away. This is not how one of the great dynasties of the sport can be managed in the NBA Finals, in his own building, by making a huge signature push.
A minor brawl between online Celtic fans after Sunday night’s game and part of the game when their team was running off the court – concerned ESPN rules analyst Steve Xavi, a former longtime NBA referee, admitted that (in a roundabout way) game officials It would be a mistake not to call a key player a second technical foul in a big game. The topic of Xavier’s admission was Drymond Green, who had already acquired a tech in the first quarter, persuading some stupid Drymond Green when he and Jillian Brown got involved shortly before halftime. Here is:
That’s right, this is really Was Something that almost certainly could have achieved a rot double-technical if it had not been called the result of Green’s ejection. The funny thing is that everyone, including Celtics supporters, knows that referees work this way and knows that the league’s saving pain-in-the-ass types use it: if it were smart, as he has done countless times. With his career, the referee’s reluctance to arm him to urinate and / or annoy a key fighter, you can close your eyes and To listen Boston fans are praising him for having the intelligence and competitive intensity to run Total War in the best of the champion tradition. Every fan likes this error in NBA referrals, or at least tolerates it in tears, while their own team benefits from it; Puts it on very instantly Others After a flurry of party rhetoric on the court, we all became John Goodman’s roar, “Am I the only one here who speaks the rules ???”
Honestly, it’s just as good as anything else to explain Game 2, although I’m not sure that any of what it won for the Warriors is more easily replicated than the suffocating defense and patient shot-making that Game 1 won for the Celtics. Both teams are aware of their own and each other’s (and referees’) weaknesses, and have learned through traumatic injuries that they can walk off the court in just a few minutes in their management.