When Peyton Manning was on the free agent market a few years ago, several teams were interested. After all, he represented an upgrade at the most important position for just about any team in the league.
One of those teams, however, needed Peyton Manning more than any other team. Broncos general manager John Elway had a singular problem at quarterback, unlike any team before or since, and maybe ever. His team had just been led to the playoffs by Tim Tebow, a player that Elway (and just about everyone else in the NFL) was convinced was completely unfit to play the position. The specific thing about Tebow, however, was that for a myriad of reasons, he was incredibly popular among a significant portion of both the Broncos’ fan base and football fans across the nation.
Elway couldn’t merely replace Tim Tebow. He needed a no-brainer, a guy who even the most ardent Tebow supporter would have to recognize as an upgrade. Anything less would be a move so unpopular that the pressure on the new quarterback would be debilitating.
Elway needed Peyton Manning — deeply, completely, desperately — and he was competing for him against teams who merely wanted him. It was an easy choice for Manning to make. Tebow went away, and there wasn’t a ripple amongst the Bronco fan base.
That’s what happened in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals Monday night in Houston. A team that wanted the game played against a team that needed to win, and it was over relatively quickly.
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The question is, of course, “what does it mean?” History says it means exactly nothing. 116 times in NBA history, a 7-game series has started 3-0, and the teams with 0 have never won the series. They’ve made it to Game 7 only three times.
Rockets fans, of course, will argue that their team is down 3-1, not 3-0, and 3-1 is very manageable, thank you. Did it just last week. Did it to Phoenix in 1995 on the way to a championship.
The key is not to see it as winning four straight games. The Rockets had to win one game, which they did Monday in pretty impressive fashion. Now they have to win one game Wednesday night in Oakland — that’s a tall order, but they came extremely close to winning there in Games 1 and 2. That would bring them back to Houston and a frenzied atmosphere for Game 6, and the Warriors would be gripping.
Should the Rockets pull that off, they’d go back to Oakland again, where they just won Game 5, and this time the Warriors AND their fans would be gripping. Don’t forget that the Warriors are out of their depth in these playoffs. They haven’t won the Western Conference finals in 40 years. You’d better believe that if Game 5 gets away from them somehow, doubt will make its presence felt, while the Rockets’ confidence will be surging.
While I have no doubt that Steve Kerr and his team would take 16 easy wins and the Larry O’Brien Trophy, my feeling is that this is really the way it’s supposed to go down. While this magical season has had several gut-check moments, most recently Game 4 of the Memphis series, most of it has been a cruise. Although there were always little things that Kerr hoped the team would do better, the wins piled up like water bottles at the TSA checkpoint in an airport.
I wrote in this space two days ago that it was obvious the Warriors were flatly better than the Rockets, and I still believe that to be true. It was pretty clear that Golden State was expecting to get the same Rockets they got on Saturday night, and the Rockets made sure that did not happen. Sometimes we forget how much athletic performance depends on emotion, but games like this one smack us in the head to remind us.
One team wanted it, one team needed it. That’s not always enough to tilt the outcome, obviously, but Monday night, it was the difference for Houston. The Warriors tried to convince themselves they needed Game 4, but they’re not stupid, and they knew that this was in no way a must-win for them. Now they need to convince themselves they really need to win Game 5, and I think they can, because they do.
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Notes from Game 4
This game also tells you how hard it is to coach in this league. Steve Kerr was gushing after Game 3, talking about how his team had finally played a half of basketball in which they minimized their turnovers and played really good defense. He felt that he would be able to leverage that with the team, to show his players that if they could always play that way, they might never lose.
48 hours later, they didn’t look like the same team at all. Their 3-point defense, which had been such a focus for them that they had allowed Harden to really hurt them in Games 1 and 2, was non-existent. On offense, they launched 3-pointers like a team trailing by 15 with two minutes to go (which they were, later).
San Francisco Chronicle beat writer Rusty Simmons wrote an entire story Monday about the psychological work Kerr was doing making sure his guys were ready to face a team fighting for their season. Five minutes in, they’re down 19-3. Gotta drive a coach crazy.
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One popular meme on the Golden State side of things is that the Rockets had everything go their way, and still the W’s were in the game halfway through the fourth quarter. You can certainly make a case that Josh Smith is unlikely to go 7-8 from the field every night, and a 30-free throw advantage is handy, but I’m not a believer in the argument that the Warriors getting the lead down to six means much of anything. Unless, of course, you go from there to four, two and eventually taking the lead and winning the game. Houston met every challenge from the Warriors, and the lead was 15-ish for almost the entire second half.
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As long as I’ve followed sports, I’ve paid only passing attention to point spreads. Once in a while one catches my eye, however, and the Game 5 spread with the Warriors as 10.5-point favorites has done so. I know those guys are supposed to be wise, but I don’t see how anyone who watched Games 1, 2 and 4 of this series would put a spread like that on this game.
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Lastly, there was a lot of conversation about Steph Curry’s scary fall and subsequent return to the game. It always surprises me how many head trauma experts I follow on Twitter. This seemed to me like a case in which the Warriors did exactly what they were supposed to do. He was out of the game for 57 minutes of clock time while they put him through the concussion protocol, during which time he kept an eye on the game and answered questions. If the series had been 2-1 either way, I think it would make sense to pursue this to see if Curry was perhaps returned to the game at the risk of his health. With the team up 3 games to 0, I don’t see any way in the world they put their best player at risk to return to a game that they were unlikely to win, and is unlikely to make a difference in the series outcome.
