But, on the side of the Warriors, who had just been perfect in their management of the end of the game during the first round in Memphis, there was also a loss. And that is to say the least.
Stephen Curry was thus able to finish his team’s top scorer at 27 points, but he did it with a 3/11 from 3-pointers that hardly resembles the best shooter in history. Similarly, Jordan Poole may have produced 20 points off the bench, he missed 5 of his 6 attempts behind the arc.
Worse still, Klay Thompson (2/12) and Andrew Wiggins (1/7) were also disastrous from long range. In the end, the Warriors have a very ugly 7/38 from 3-point range, or 18%, which is simply their worst shooting game in the playoffs. In NBA history, only four teams had already missed more 3-pointers than them before this Game 2, the record being held by the Thunder, in Game 5 of its first round against the Rockets, in the « bubble » Orlando, with 39 misses from afar (7/46).
“It’s part of our nature, of what we’ve always been, to take shots from everywhere. But there is a higher level of game vision, and we shouldn’t have rushed or forced a pass that wasn’t there. » regretted Stephen Curry in a post-match press conference. “We have to better recognize what is happening in the game and adapt to what we have to do to win. With what Ja was doing offensively, we also had to make him pay for it defensively, which we didn’t do by taking those kinds of shots. We need to better understand what we have to do. »
“We were too impatient”
The Dubs had already finished one game at 18% in 2018, but that was in a 99-91 win over San Antonio in the regular season. Golden State’s worst 3-point night in the playoffs came in a 98-96 loss to the Clippers in 2014…
“We took bad shots at the end of the game. We had some advantageous situations but we did not know how to take advantage of them”, analyzed Steve Kerr. “We should have taken better shots on the last possessions, but frankly, on the whole game in general. We have to do better than that and it’s easy to say that after a night at 7/38. We will definitely do better! But we have to help ourselves, taking better shots, creating better shots for each other. Because there they are, those shots! We were too impatient. »
For his part, Taylor Jenkins praised the defensive work of his troops, with aggressiveness on the outside to rush the opposing shots but also a little nod to the mastery of the Warriors, always able to spin n any defense.
“It is above all a question of bringing the necessary energy to the shooters, of not allowing quick shots on the transition. We just have to make them work and force them to take difficult shots. We did a good job of doing our rotations fairly quickly. They spin the ball so well that it’s hard to follow but you can’t hope to arrive in time enough to hinder their attempts. We wanted to set the tone from the start by being aggressive and increasing the number of shot challenges. »
An extremely rare event in their recent history, this type of chronic awkwardness should not happen again for the Warriors against Memphis. But this is only the beginning of a series that promises to be long and exciting. As Ja Morant and Stephen Curry said to each other at the end of the game that night actually…