The Warriors took over Game 7 with a third-quarter 3-point barrage
The seeds of the Golden State Warriors’ win in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals — a come-from-behind victory on the heels of a more stunning come-from-behind victory that produced a 4-3 triumph in a Western Conference finals in which the Warriors trailed 3-1 one week ago — were sown midway through the second quarter.
That’s when Game 6 hero Jedi Klay Thompson finally got his first field goal (a 3-pointer, natch) to fall after seven prior tries had gone awry. Two more Thompson triples would follow in the next two minutes, as they so often seem to with this team, helping trim what had been a 13-point Oklahoma City Thunder lead down to just four.
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The Warriors didn’t grab Game 7 by the scruff of its neck right then. In fact, OKC responded by ripping off an 8-0 run that pushed its lead back to 12 with 2:21 remaining in the first half. But before Thompson pocketed his first make, Golden State had shot 9-for-32 from the field and just 3-for-11 from 3-point land.
Klay getting unstuck — and, specifically, getting going by knocking down a 3 uncorked over the outstretched arms of Thunder center Steven Adams, who had switched onto Thompson after Andrew Bogut successfully screened Andre Roberson out of the play — spelled doom for Oklahoma City. The deep shots that had missed the target were about to start finding their mark, and as was the case Saturday at Chesapeake Energy Arena, they would prove to be the Thunder’s downfall.
“For me, I like to think it’s a matter of time before I knock a few in,” Thompson said after the game. “And when that happens, my confidence is back.”
It all tilted after a baseline floater by Adams gave the Thunder a 50-42 lead with 10:19 remaining in the third quarter. Over the next three minutes and 55 seconds, the Warriors would knock down five 3-pointers — all after working switches off screens or cross-matches in transition that got Golden State’s ball-handlers and shooters matched up against Oklahoma City’s bigs on the perimeter — in a 15-4 run that gave the Warriors a lead they’d never relinquish.
A now-confident and in-rhythm Thompson felt no compunction about stepping back and letting one fly over the top of Serge Ibaka after Festus Ezeli had forced a switch with a screen of Roberson:
Nor did Andre Iguodala, when Stephen Curry’s dribble penetration gave him enough room in the corner to get a good look over the top of Ibaka’s contest:
(Iguodala, by the way, repaid Steve Kerr’s decision to slot him into the starting lineup in place of Harrison Barnes with seven points, four rebounds, three assists and 43 more minutes of stellar defense, mostly on Kevin Durant. Awful nice “in case of emergency” option, there.)
But the catalyst, as ever, was Curry, who had his way with the Thunder’s bigs en route to three rapid-fire 3-pointers in less than three minutes to fuel the run:
The combination of the damage Steph did when pulling up against mismatched bigs attempting to stay at home on him and the dime he dropped for Iguodala after the Thunder attempted to collapse on him show just how tough a cover he can be when he’s fully operational, and just how difficult a task Oklahoma City faced on Monday night.
“There are certain situations in certain coverages you can trap him, and then there are certain times the worst thing to do is to trap him, because the guy in the pick-and-roll is a handler and a playmaker,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said. “So the ones that we did switch on him, we got caught with a big — I thought we could have done a better job pressing up into him, making him play inside the line. I thought a couple times he crossed our bigs over and got off some shots, and we needed to probably keep him inside the line. But that’s easier said than done. Because when you do try to double him with the wrong guy, they make you pay with somebody else.”
Whether due to the Thunder defenders’ length and athleticism limiting his effectiveness, the toll of having to guard Westbrook on the other end, lingering effects of the ankle and knee injuries that cost him six games through the first two rounds of the postseason, or — most likely — all of the above, Curry often seemed ill at ease earlier in the series when presented with the opportunity to attack those switches and mismatches. His lateral movement didn’t look as sharp, his drives didn’t seem as decisive, and he rarely exploded toward either the rim in pursuit of contact or the half-court line for the kind of stepback 3-balls that have deflated so many opponents.
He began to resemble the fire of old a bit in Golden State’s first elimination-deferring win, scoring 31 points on 9-for-20 shooting in Game 5 and getting himself to the foul line 10 times. But it was his turn in Saturday’s Game 6, during which he scored 22 of his 31 points after halftime and sealed the deal with a clutch runner over Ibaka, that signaled his full-fledged comeback to Warriors coach Steve Kerr.
“I could tell in Game 6 that he was starting to feel like himself,” Kerr said. “He looked better. He looked like he was moving better. I told our coaching staff yesterday, I have no doubt Steph’s going to have a huge game. That’s just who he is. And he looked right again.”
Curry sure looked right on Monday, scoring a game-high 36 points on 13-for-24 shooting, including a 7-for-12 mark from deep, to go with eight assists and five rebounds in 40-plus minutes of work.
“He’s had a rough playoff go because of the injuries, and as I said, I think he finally felt right physically the last couple games,” Kerr said. “And this is who he is. Having a clutch performance in a Game 7. That’s Steph Curry.”
Thompson added 21 on 7-for-19 shooting, canning six of his 11 triple tries. Between them, the Splash Brothers accounted for 13 of Golden State’s 17 3-pointers; Oklahoma City as a team only made seven 3s in Game 7, after shooting a dismal 3-for-23 in Game 6.
Game 6 and 7 combined
Warriors: 38-of-81 from three
Thunder: 10-of-50 from three— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) May 31, 2016
From the start of Game 5, from 3:
Thunder: 23-80 (28.7%)
Curry/Thompson: 35-72 (48.6%)
— Ben Dowsett (@Ben_Dowsett) May 31, 2016
“I thought their shot-making in that third quarter, especially from the 3-point line, was the difference in the game,” Donovan said.
And yet, while the string of early-third-quarter Splash Brother bombs fundamentally changed the math the Thunder had to overcome on Monday, Kerr focused after the game on the late-third contributions of a lower-wattage set of Warriors — a 12-0 run led by Golden State’s deep bench.
Kerr’s insistence on sticking with the far reaches of his bench despite inconsistent play against Oklahoma City’s more talented but shorter rotation at times elicited question marks from observers (and exclamation points from Warriors fans). But there, in the closing minutes of the third quarter of a winner-take-all Game 7, was Leandro Barbosa, attacking Enes Kanter off the dribble and hitting a left-wing runner. There was Anderson Varejao, first feeding his fellow Brazilian for that runner, and giving Steph a short-roll outlet when OKC tried to trap him on the high screen on a pair of plays that led to a Barnes corner 3 and an Andy finger roll, and drawing a charge on Westbrook in a worth-every-penny stretch.
“Just give our guys coming off the bench huge credit,” Thompson said. “We have really true pros on this team. They’re always ready.”
And there was Shaun Livingston — such an important table-setter, defender and post-up weapon throughout Golden State’s 73-win campaign, but often a liability in this series — willing in a tough floater in the lane before getting taking advantage of the opportunity afforded him by some rare inattentive OKC defense to get an easier bucket:
“Yeah, that was the key stretch of the game, obviously,” Kerr said. “Shaun Livingston had that fast-break dunk, which brought the house down, and I thought our two Brazilians were fantastic. Anderson had an incredible one minute and 51 second run […] Barbosa, who I’ve gone away from the last few games, comes in, stays ready, hits a big shot for us. And Harrison, who we moved to the bench obviously tonight, hit that corner three from Varejao, which was just a huge shot. […] With everything on the line, our guys all came through.”
The stars got the ball rolling; the reserves rammed it down the Thunder’s throats. And after withstanding a Durant-led fourth-quarter surge that cut the lead to 90-86 with 1:40 remaining — thanks in large part to Ibaka fouling Curry on a 3-pointer in the waning seconds of the shot clock, a miscue that led to three free throws, that Donovan lamented, and that Durant called “a dagger for us” — Curry sealed the game with another, more conventionally Warriors-y dagger:
“They beat us in the 3-point line the last two games,” said Durant, who finished with 27 points on 10-for-19 shooting, seven rebounds, three assists, one steal and one block in 46 minutes. “We beat them everywhere else, they beat us from the 3-point line, and that was the series.”
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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