The Golden State Warriors will go as far as Steph Curry will carry them. That is inarguable. That being said and agreed to, how far that will be depends rather dramatically on how well his teammates play.
If you don’t believe me, sit down for a chat with Curry’s predecessor, Rick Barry. The star of the 1970s Warriors was incredibly skilled, and able to win games all by himself sometimes, but his only NBA title came in a season when Golden State put together a perfect blend of complimentary players who took turns supporting his efforts.
Klay Thompson, Curry’s “Splash Brother from Another Mother,” is the most famous of his teammates. 37-point quarters will do that for you. Draymond Green is no longer a secret, either. Warrior fans get a little uncomfortable when Green heads to the bench, whether it be for foul trouble or a much-deserved blow. Andrew Bogut’s arrival in Oakland is marked as the beginning of whatever the Warriors achieve this year. That’s due mostly to Bogut’s considerable talent, of course, but that transaction had the added benefit of clearing the logjam at the point guard position by sending Monta Ellis out of town.
Who’s the fifth Warrior starter? At the beginning of the Western Conference semifinals, many people (including some W’s fans) would have had a difficult time coming up with the name. Two weeks later, however, Harrison Barnes has started to get some recognition.
First of all, Barnes had a fine regular season. He’s a starter on a team that won 67 games, but he’s rarely the guy people talk about after the game. In Games 4 and 5 against Memphis, however, he drew my attention over and over again. His low-post defense has been a pleasant surprise, and he has provided early offense for the Warriors when they desperately needed it. He scored 6 points in Game 4 before Steph Curry even took a shot, forcing the Grizzlies to pay attention to him. In Game 5, he tallied 7 of the team’s first 12 points, helping the Warriors weather a nine-minute stretch in which they looked like a local CYO team.
His biggest basket of the series may have come in Game 6. The Grizzlies had dug almost all the way out of a 15-point hole, cutting the Warriors’ lead to just one point with four minutes remaining in the third quarter. Golden State’s offense had hit another of its rough patches, scoring just 5 points in the first eight minutes of the quarter, on 2-for-15 shooting. Another miss, and Memphis would have a chance to take its first lead of the ballgame.
With the Memphis crowd engaged for the first time since the introductions, Curry threw the ball to Barnes a few feet behind the free throw line. He rose without hesitation and nailed the jumper, kicking off a 10-4 Warrior run that restored order… and set the stage for Curry’s 62-foot buzzer-beater that will cause even the most ardent fans to forget Barnes’ shot and everything else that happened that night.
Throughout the series, you could see his confidence increase. Barnes has been quoted as saying that he has some regrets about how last year’s first-round series went against the Los Angeles Clippers, when Golden State lost in seven games and he felt he wasn’t aggressive enough on offense. Hey, it would be easy for a guy to feel that any shot he takes is one less for Steph or Klay, so you can understand that it takes some chutzpah to think about getting your own offense. It seems, however, that he’s realizing that if he’s not a threat to score, his teammates will have a much tougher time getting good shots, so he’s become a fully functioning part of the offense.
Barnes, if you don’t recall, was the No. 1 high school prospect in the country his senior year. He went to North Carolina, where he was the Freshman of the Year in the ACC. The Warriors drafted him No. 7 after two years in college, and his first two years saw him swing back and forth between showing great potential and looking completely lost. This season, in another example of how good Steve Kerr has been for this team, he has flourished, and seems to be hitting his stride just at the right time.
Rick Barry will tell you that no matter how good your best player is, you can’t win an NBA title without contributions from every starter and most of your bench, and Harrison Barnes is looking like he’s ready to play his part.
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A few other observations heading into the Warriors’ series against Houston:
There are plenty of people here in the Bay Area who are very willing to look past the Rockets, citing the Warriors’ four fairly easy wins over Houston in the regular season. I’m not a believer that the playoffs mirror the regular season, especially between two teams that each won a lot of games. It’s one thing to say that the Warriors would sweep, say, New Orleans, and even in that series, the Pelicans could have snatched a couple of wins that would have made that series much more taxing for Golden State.
I think the Warriors win, but it will take at least five games and could go the whole seven. Playoff basketball is about adjustments, and adjustments to adjustments. So far, Steve Kerr and his staff have been very impressive at that task, but every matchup is different. The Rockets have every bit as much confidence as the Warriors after coming back from a 3-1 deficit against L.A., and the fact that the whole team took part in one of the biggest comebacks in sports history gives them an added boost.
One player the Warriors will have to contend with is Pablo Prigioni, the 38-year-old Argentinian who came off the bench to give the Clippers fits last week. He was acquired by the Rockets late in the season from the New York Knicks, and didn’t play for Houston in any of the four games the Warriors won so easily during the regular season.
This has shaped up to be an interesting postseason for the Warriors in terms of travel. They are about to play their third straight opponent from the Southwest Division. While charters have made NBA travel much easier for the teams than it is for, say, the media, the air hours do take a toll, and if the Warriors do beat Houston in this series, they will face a team — either Atlanta or Cleveland — which will have spent much less time in the air than they have. That’s something to keep in mind.
This should be a great series. None of the games against Memphis were in doubt with a minute to go, but I have a hunch that streak will come to an end soon.
