There’s going to be a common theme in coverage of Game 3 of the Western Conference finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets: Steph Curry is __________. A thesaurus full of words will fill that blank, and every single one will be true.
But that’s not what happened Saturday night. Steph Curry wasn’t better in Game 3 than he’s been all year. What happened last night is the same thing that happened in the Memphis series, except that because Mike Conley missed Game 1, it took the Warriors an extra game to figure out what they needed to do defensively to take over the series.
What happened Saturday night is that Steve Kerr and his brilliant, highest-payroll-in-the-league staff tweaked the way they defended James Harden. Did it help that Kerr’s defensive specialist is Ron Adams, who was on the Oklahoma City staff when Harden played there? I would say yes.
There was a lot of talk after Game 1 of this series that postgame press conferences are stupid and dull, and need a two-year-old on the podium to make them tolerable. Well, if that’s how you feel, you haven’t heard Steve Kerr in that setting. Here’s what he said about Harden after Game 3:
“It’s hard to stop him. He’s got an incredible pace to his game. He sees angles, he gets into the cracks of the defense, and there are little subtle things that you try to do that he may exploit and he may not. I just thought that we did a better job of taking away some of the angles that he was attacking us on in the first couple of games, and he missed some shots that he hit in Games 1 and 2 also.”
That’s precise. That’s not just “Well, we’ll put Harrison on him and see what happens.” That’s a change in defensive philosophy on the one player that was hurting your team, just as we saw when the Warriors changed their low-post strategy against Memphis. The series changed in an instant, and unlike the Grizzlies, who had won two games prior to the Warriors figuring it out, the Rockets had no room for error.
I know that another theme of the coverage from Game 3 will be that the Rockets failed to show up. That doesn’t make any sense, though. How do you not show up for a Game 3 at home trailing 2-0? They had energy in the first few minutes. They pulled off one of the most beautiful give-and-gos ever with Jason Terry and Dwight Howard, and it looked like it was going to be a great game.
The Rockets died when Harden didn’t get going. The changes the Warriors made confused him, and when his shots didn’t drop, his teammates knew they had no chance to win. Remember how the rest of the Warriors played against Memphis when Curry was struggling with his shot? It was shocking to all of us when he and Klay Thompson were missing open threes, and their teammates were affected by that.
The bottom line is that, as we knew going in, the Warriors are by far the better team. Houston’s only chance was to get such great performances from Harden and Howard that they could steal a game in Oakland, and they came tantalizingly close to pulling it off. In Game 3 they had an off night, and the Warriors played well, and the result was a 35-point blowout that didn’t feel that close.
The Clippers series proved that even with three brutal losses the Rockets could win a series, and if they had won either of the first two games in Oakland, that would be their story tomorrow. Instead, they’re dead men walking, and the Warriors are going to try to put them out of their misery without getting anyone hurt.
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More notes from Game 3:
Kerr’s parents were academics, and you can tell that he has teaching in his blood. The thing that really got him excited about Game 3 was that the first half validated what he has been telling his team all season: “Take care of the ball and play very good defense, and we’ll be fine.” That’s what they did in the first half, with no “live ball” turnovers (the only one was an offensive foul) and holding Houston under 40 points for the half. Even though they shot only 45% in the first half, and under 30% on three-point attempts, they led the Rockets by the shocking margin of 25 points. Kerr talked a lot at the press conference about how that was going to be great for his team to see.
Come to think of it, that really gives you an idea of how hard it is to coach in the NBA. Here’s a guy with great, smart, team players, and he’s still excited that they now have a real-live example of what he’s been preaching all along, which means he doesn’t think they really believe him. He has expressed frustration about the turnovers all season long.
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Another similarity between this game and Game 4 of the Memphis series was Curry’s patience with his offense. He had only three points in the first quarter, and yet the Warriors led by 12 when it was over. The leading first-quarter scorer was Andrew Bogut, who took advantage of Dwight Howard’s desire to block any shot that came near him. Bogut had 10 points, along with six by Klay Thompson, five by Draymond Green and four by Shaun Livingston. Curry actually came out of the game with 3:30 left in the quarter, as Kerr saw an early opportunity to get his star some rest.
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Bogut and his backup, Festus Ezeli, combined for 22 points and 18 rebounds in 38 minutes. They shot a combined 10-14 from the field. It was reminiscent of the 1975 championship Warriors squad, which had a two-headed center in the persons of Clifford Ray and George Johnson. Ray was a very good passer and screen-setter, and Johnson an outstanding shotblocker. Coach Al Attles was able to use the two interchangeably according to matchups, and both played pivotal roles in the Warriors’ sweep of the Washington Bullets. This year’s team has several commonalities with the team of 40 years ago, and we will explore those in the next week or so, leading up to the start of the Finals on June 4.
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I was glad to see Bruce Jenkins of the San Francisco Chronicle mention in his Game 3 column that Steve Kerr, like Attles in 1975, is really pushing all the right buttons with his team:
The longer these playoffs last, the more you wonder whether Steve Kerr deserved that Coach of the Year award, instead of Atlanta’s Mike Budenholzer. Nothing against the other worthy candidates, but in his very first year of coaching at any level, Kerr is finding all the right answers at all the right times. For months he’s been preaching ball protection and a sense of calm through the team’s hurry-up style; Saturday night, in a hostile setting, that dream came to life.
I have felt since the day the award was announced that Kerr was the victim, as many have been before him, of the dreaded “East Coast Bias.” I don’t mean to imply that it’s something sinister, it’s just the fact that the Warriors play at least 75% of their games at 10 p.m. or later on the East Coast, and even the most responsible award voter is just not going to be able to see those games. You really needed not only to watch the games, but see him in press conferences and hear him on radio shows to understand what he accomplished this year. More on that later, too.
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Lastly, can you ever remember a series going from “tight” to “over” faster than this one? Two incredible games with great performances by great players, and then suddenly POOF! Over.
Did anyone else notice that the Rockets promised only to “fight” in Game 4? Nobody said anything about “winning.” It’s really shocking, until you remember how they played in Games 1, 3 and 4 of the Clippers series. Then it starts to make sense.
