So what’s the problem? Why do I feel that the Warriors are fighting an uphill battle tonight in Oklahoma City?
Home court.
I’ve seen a lot of teams lose on their home floor, so I don’t look at home-court advantage as the determining factor when analyzing a matchup.
Usually.
This year is strange, folks. Look at the Eastern Conference Finals, where until Friday night the Cavaliers looked like the 1986 Celtics when at home, and a bunch of tall guys from the YMCA when on the road. The difference is as stark in the Western Conference series: The Warriors were good in Games 2 and 5, and the Thunder were fantastic in Games 3 and 4.
What’s that, you say — did I miss one? Did I leave one out?
Ahh, yes, here we are. Game 1. The Warriors got a banked 3-pointer from Curry at the first-half buzzer, giving his team a 13-point lead. However, they hit the snooze bar at halftime, and when they came out for the second half they looked sleepy. OKC came back to take away Game 1, and the home-court advantage the Warriors had earned with their 73 wins. This, ladies and gentlemen, is “the one that got away,” the one that will haunt the Warriors if they fail to win Game 6.
OAKLAND, CA – MAY 16: Stephen Curry #30 of the Golden State Warriors looks on during game one of the NBA Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder at ORACLE Arena on May 16, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
I’m not talking about haunting them for a summer, or a season, or even a few years. I’m talking about every single time someone brings up the fact that they won 73 games but didn’t win a championship. They will have to think about the second half of Game 1 at home, when they blew a double-digit lead and played completely out of character. They will have to think about their 14-point fourth quarter in Oracle Arena, where they never lost from October through March this past season. They will have to recall that first game of this series, possibly thinking they’d be able to get it back on the road… only to find out that they couldn’t.
This is a “forever” haunt. I’m sure they are confident that they can beat Cleveland, and might have even been guilty of looking past OKC in that first game, especially when things went so swimmingly in the first half. You know they’re burning to beat Cleveland with Love and Irving to silence the doubters from a year ago, and this may be their only chance to do it.
This other matter has gotten in the way.
The W’s, the knives of elimination at their throats, have to travel to Oklahoma City, where the Thunder get so much energy from their crowd. Their steals and fast-break baskets provoke wild cheering from the fans, and the pace of the game changes perceptibly. In Oakland, a Thunder dunk or 3-pointer would simply silence the crowd momentarily. Even if the Thunder made two or three big plays in sequence, it wasn’t a problem. Silence doesn’t build on itself like noise does.
What concerns me from the Warriors’ standpoint is that they struggled to beat the Thunder even in the friendly confines of Oracle Arena. You have to imagine that at some point The Thunder will put together a run, and the Warriors have to repel it. That’s much easier to say than do, by the way.
Warrior fans can take no solace from the Cavaliers finally putting it together on the road to close out the Toronto series. Cleveland is, despite the similarity in their season records, far superior to Toronto, something I don’t think even the most passionate Warrior fan would try to claim is the case in the West.
I think we can all agree that the Warriors’ Game 5 performance was a significant upgrade from where they were in Games 3 and 4, but that it won’t be enough to win Game 6. What do they have to do?
1) Good early start
The Warriors trailed by 13 points in the first quarter of Game 3, and by 14 in the first quarter of Game 5. This cannot happen in Game 6. It gets the crowd going, and it also allows the Thunder’s supporting cast to play looser. Shots are much easier to take and make with a double-digit lead. Stars don’t care, they know they’re not going to get pulled from a game if they miss a shot. Dion Waiters, Andre Roberson, Randy Foye and even Enes Kanter might seize up if the game is tight. That’s one of the reasons the Thunder role players have been so much more effective at home than they have on the road.
By the way, the same is true of Warriors’ role players. Marreese Speights, for example was 4-for-15 in the two games in OKC. He was 9-for-13 in the Warriors’ two home wins. Anyone thinking that Speights will automatically repeat his Game 5 performance (4-for-7 shooting, three charges taken, 14 points) in Game 6 needs to share whatever they’re using.
2) Don’t “hunt” 3-pointers
When you miss a 3-pointer against Oklahoma City, there’s an excellent chance it will wind up as a layup, a dunk, or an open 3-pointer. The Warriors need to hit 3-pointers to win Game 6, there’s no doubt about that, but they have to be very efficient with them. They hit almost 40 percent of their threes during the regular season, but have hit only 30 percent during the two games in OKC. They also shot way too many, probably because they were behind from the second quarter on.
The way to achieve this is to take the threes that come to them in the flow of the offense, but not force them, and not take any contested ones. They did a good job in Game 5 of putting the ball on the floor when the Thunder ran them off the 3-point line, and they need to continue to expand that part of their game tonight. This brings us nicely to our next point.
3) Finish at the Rim, especially Curry
The narrative prior to Game 5 was that the Thunder’s length (Kevin Durant’s wingspan is 7-foot-5) was making it harder for the Warriors to finish shots in the paint. Even when the W’s got a step, their shots were either blocked or altered, and they were losing what should have been fairly easy points. They did a better job of this in Game 5, especially Steph Curry.
Curry’s “in the paint” game is a well-kept secret. Unless you watch actual games, not just highlights, you’d never know he had the third-highest shooting percentage in the paint in the NBA, much higher than any other guard. However, in Game 3, he took one (1) shot inside the paint, and he missed it. The adjustment for Game 4 was to put the ball on the floor more, and he did, but he was 2-for-7 on those attempts.
I mentioned in the last section what happens when you miss a 3-pointer against the Thunder. Believe it or not, when a guard like Curry or Klay Thompson misses a layup, the result is even worse. Now you have one of your primary transition defenders not only under the basket, but sometimes on the floor near the baseline, after the missed layup attempt. That player (Steph or Klay) has virtually no chance to get back in time to stop whatever the Thunder can put together on that subsequent fast break.
Thompson has been fantastic in this respect: He was 9-for-11 in the paint in the two games in OKC. It is Curry, 5-for-7 at the rim in Game 5, who holds the key to Game 6 for Golden State.
4) Defend without fouling
This has been a problem for the Warriors all postseason, even against Houston. When they put the opponent on the line, it slows down their own rhythm and allows the other team to set its defense. Even if the FT is missed, it’s rarely a fast-break opportunity because the floor is balanced. Game 1 turned in the third quarter, when the Thunder shot 16 free throws. In the fourth, the Warriors played much better defense, allowing only 23 points, but their offense was nonexistent and scored only 14.
In the Warriors’ two wins, the Thunder have shot 19 and 24 free throws. In Game 3, they shot 18 in the second quarter, outscoring the Warriors 38-19. In Game 4, OKC shot 20 free throws in the second quarter, outscoring the Warriors 42-25. There’s absolutely no way around this. If they can’t defend the Thunder without fouling, they will lose Game 6.
The fact that this game is on the road is not going to help, wither or not Scott Foster is officiating. The main thing is avoiding the reach-in fouls Russell Westbrook and Durant are so good at drawing. None of the Thunder should ever be fouled shooting a 3-pointer.
5) Production from the 5-spot
Andrew Bogut had what the Warriors are hoping was a breakout game in Game 5. He needs to do that again. I think Bogut has played so few minutes in the last two years that he’s gotten very casual about fouling. It doesn’t really matter if you pick up a touch-foul or two if you’re playing only 18 minutes. Kerr made it clear before Game 5 that Bogut needed to do better, and he responded. The Warriors’ small lineup is not effective against OKC, so Bogut, Festus Ezeli and Speights have to come through.
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So what do I think? I think they have a chance to win this game, but if they rely on a double-digit comeback in the fourth quarter, it’s not happening…
… well, unless Steph gets really hot… and Klay hits a couple of crazy ones… and Draymond draws a key charge from Durant that fouls him out with three minutes to play… and Westbrook throws a couple of passes into the stands…
Okay, I can see it. Warriors in 7.
