What the Golden State Warriors did against the Boston Celtics in game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night was the definition of “answer.” After missing the first game of the series in front of their fans, thanks to a terrible performance in the fourth quarter, the Warriors realized they needed to come back quickly and that’s exactly what they did.
The game was extremely close in the first 24 minutes, but in the third quarter the Warriors raised a level and got a serious split. Golden State beat Boston 35-14 this quarter and never looked back. They continued on shore to win 107-88 and tied the series at 1-1 in the process.
Stephen Curry led the Golden State with 29 points, six rebounds and four assists, while Jordan Poole added 17 points from the bench. As a team, the Warriors made 18 turns for Boston and scored 33 points from those losses. That was a big factor in the result.
Jason Tatum was ahead of the Celtics by 28 points and six rebounds, but his performance was not enough, as only two other Celtics players double-digit. Now the series is moving to Boston for Games 3 and 4. Here are the biggest conclusions from Game 2.
Regression is a cruel mistress
When Boston shot 21 of 45 behind the arc in Game 1, Draymond Green was less impressed. “They scored 21 3s and Marcus Smart, Al Horford and Derrick White combined 15,” Green said. “These guys are good shooters, but they combined for what …. 15 against 23 of these guys? Eh. We’ll be fine.”
It turned out that he was right. Green had spent much of Match 1 deviating from Horford to focus on defensive assistance, but in Game 2 he set a new tone for his first possession. Green played Horford so aggressively that he forced the ball jump.
Boston still managed to start a hot 10-of-19 from behind the arc, but finished 3-of-14 in the second half. Horford and Smart combined 44 points in Game 1. They scored just four in Game 2. In fact, even taking into account the garbage time, Jason Tatum and Jaylan Brown still managed to combine more than half of Boston’s points (45 of 88). The role-players who shot Boston to victory in Game 1 remained icy cold in Game 2.
There will be a middle ground here. Boston is better than 3 out of 14 out of deep and worse than 10 out of 19 because every team in NBA history falls somewhere between those two extremes. But apart from White and sometimes Grant Williams, the Warriors were much more aggressive in pursuing Boston shooters. In that sense, the number of 3 points made by Boston hardly tells the story here. The fact is that the Warriors kept the Celtics with 12 fewer attempts (45 vs. 33) in Game 2. The Celtics had no counter. As a result, they failed to reach 90 points.
We are beginning to understand who these teams really are
The rotations tend to get smaller and smaller as the playoff series progresses, and tonight was a perfect example of why. The Celtics would like to be able to play four big men. Robert Williams III plays injured and Al Horford has just turned 36. Anything Daniel Thays can give them will be greatly appreciated. The Celtics managed to surpass by 12 points in the seven racing minutes they played in this match. The moment he decided to try to play with a drip against Stephen Curry must have been the time when Name Udoka decided to kick him out for the rest of the series.
Steve Kerr’s revelations have been imposed on him. Andre Iguodala was sent off before match 2 due to a knee injury. This allowed him to give Gary Payton II, which was a DNP-CD in Game 1.25, largely significant minutes. It is no coincidence that the Celtics made 18 turns in match 2, five more than in match 1. Statistically, this was a very predictable development. The Warriors generated 3.3 more revolutions per 100 possessions during Peyton’s regular minutes than when they played without him. Coincidentally, this is the exact difference between wins and losses in the Boston playoffs. The Warriors scored 33 points in Game 2, 18 more than the Celtics. They won the match with 19 points.
The problem with Peyton’s extended minutes is that Boston has little interest in keeping him on the perimeter. Peyton compensates for this in other ways. He is a brilliant cutter and nuclear athlete, but Golden State still had to inject distance in other ways, especially given Green’s limitations as a shooter, so they tried Nemanja Belica, whose defense weaknesses seem to have been greatly overestimated. He beat Luka Doncic in the last round and did well against Boston in Game 2.
As he tends to go to the finals after two games against each other, the Warriors and Celtics seem to have a good idea of which players can survive in this series and which cannot. Boston seems to be in the top eight: Tatum, Brown, Smart, Horford, White, Pritchard and Williams. Golden State has eight of its own: Curry, Green, Peyton, Clay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Keven Looney, Otto Porter Jr. and Jordan Poole. Bjelica made a compelling argument for slot # 9 tonight. Iguodala’s record could give him an advantage. But the days of Golden State punishing Theis seem to be over. From now on, we will probably see only the best players that these teams can offer.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Thompson
Clay Thompson shoots 4 of 19 from the field in Game 2. It’s a tough night, but it’s hardly unusually bad. Thompson has shot under 40 percent of the field in 15 of his 32 regular season games. This postseason he vomits one or two in a series and even when the statistics for the whole game look decent, he will often have to save the miserable first half with a better second.
That doesn’t mean Thompson is some kind of train crash. The tall ones were as high as ever. His 32-point burst to close the Mavericks was retro Clay. He still has an average of 20 points per game in the postseason. But the Warriors desperately want a second permanent goal scorer. Jordan Poole is still not there and is fighting in match 1. Andrew Wiggins had a slow start to the finals. Curry is currently generating almost everything in the attack for Golden State. Thompson is not exactly a ball manipulator, but the attack is much smoother when Warriors can at least rely on him to make open strikes and generate some of his own gaze inside the rainbow.
He failed to stand up to Boston’s stellar defense in the finals and so far in the series he has shot with only 30.3 percent of the field. The Warriors may have defended well enough to hold Boston tonight, but they won’t win three more games with Thompson shooting that way. Their hopes for the championship rely on his best version to appear more often than the worst, but based on night to night, the Warriors do not seem to know which one they will get.
Add Comment