Here are nine games that explain Game 5:
1. Hello friend, good start
In the first four games of the NBA Finals, Golden State gradually turned its attack on Carrie, who was running high pick-and-roll. Game 5 started, however, with the classic Warriors movement. Carrie gives the ball to Otto Porter Jr. and then cuts along the baseline, with Al Horford’s face guarding him. When Porter slides a screen, there is no rim protection, as Robert Williams III guards the ball and Horford is busy with Carrie: The Celtics have done a fantastic job defending Golden State’s off-pitch efforts, but that does not mean coach Steve Kerr will default to static pick-and-roll. The Warriors want to get Boston to take on multiple actions, because each action requires defenders to think and communicate. The first possession of the game provided a neat thumbnail of the battle that took place each time Golden State had the ball. The Warriors’ defense is exhausting and they believe that if they keep running their things, the opponent will eventually wear out. Scoring against the Celtics is exhausting and they believe that if they lock in and limit their mistakes, the opponent will eventually wear out. Here, Golden State beat the switch with a slip, but Draymond Green had to place his pass perfectly and Porter had to hit the lay over Jason Tatum’s outstretched arms. This bucket was the beginning of a Warriors 14-4 streak in which Curry scored just two points.
2. Simple game
In Boston’s opening win, Tatum had 13 assists and Horford had six three-pointers. In Game 3, the Celtics’ other win, Tatum had nine assists and effectively targeted Carrie. This possession at the end of the second half, which ended with a kickout 3 by Horford by Tatum, shows what has worked aggressively for Boston in this series: Tatum got into the paint with a good distance around him, collapsed the defense, made Andre Iguodala believe that he was passing Jaylen Brown in the corner and hit Horford for an open 3. Boston’s problem is that this almost did not happen enough. This was just the second three-pointer for the Celtics in the game – they lost the first 12 – and Tatum finished with four assists. It is no coincidence that his other assists all came in the third quarter, which they dominated. “When we are at our best, it is a simple movement of the ball,” said Boston coach Ime Udoka. “I think the third ten minutes showed that. The movement and the kick were beautiful, it worked, they received open shots.
3. Just as they wrote it
Here’s a profoundly weird series: After a double on Tatum and a steal, Curry refuses to take a pull-up 3 on the go, perhaps terrified by Robert Williams III behind him. He gives the ball to Green, who sends a left-footed pass to Clay Thompson on the opposite side. Thompson attacks Horford close-out and then goes to an outrageous, one-legged runner over Williams from, oh, about 17 feet? Take a look at Green’s reaction when this occurs: Thompson finished with 21 points in a 7-to-14 shot, including a 5-for-11 from deep. This is an objectively ridiculous shot you have to make in any NBA game, let alone in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, but it’s Thompson, so it wasn’t shocking when he came in. Why did I include this? Because the Warriors had nine steals from Boston’s two, and five of those Golden State steals led directly to buckets on the other end. (The other four: Three missed pulls by Carrie and a foul.) We’ve seen that before.
4. Surprise!
The Celtics did not completely change the way they defended Curry, but selectively became more aggressive. Here, they throw a surprise double-team at him, but Curry calmly removes Tatum from his path, continues to search and finds Gary Payton II for a lay-up with a clear, left-handed pass: This is my favorite of Carrie’s eight assists, and it shows why the Celtics were reluctant to put two on the ball against him. He lost all nine of his three-pointers, but still left his mark on the game. “He’s just using this aggression against them,” Carrie said. The fact is, you know, I do not know if I have more than five assists in the first four games, and that total goes up, and we still have a lot out there because we have different ways of attacking you, even if I’m not just trying to chase shots. And using gravity, ball movement, all these things to make regular Warriors basketball. It is something you feel. And obviously you never lose your aggression, even though you are not shooting like you usually do. Select the checkbox to confirm that you want to sign up.
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5. This is a quick break
After falling five points behind, the Warriors played a series of transitional games in the late third and early fourth quarters to regain momentum. You probably remember Jordan Poole’s 3, but here is another one that will make it a pain to watch in the movie, starring Green and Peyton at full speed: This is a formidable transitional defense from Boston, and it is emblematic of the Golden State mentality. This was not a Curry game, so he had to score as many points as he could. In this case, it means that Green pushes the pace when the Warriors do not have the numbers and sends a bounce pass exactly where it needed to go to convert a 2-on-3 break into two points – just in time . “The response to the Boston run to me was the key to the game,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said after the victory. Green has spoken of playing with “power” in almost every press conference during the Finals. This does not just mean that you play natural defense. means you play offensive games like this, creating high scoring chances from the air against a defense that does not allow many of them.
6. Hard look
Nine minutes to go and the Warriors 13-0, Marcus Smart ran a dribble with Brown out of the 3-point line. It was so high that Green, who was guarding Smart, just went under the screen. Instead of trying to get Poole to defend a second move, Brown took on the size of Green one-on-one. It can do this pull-up 3, but it’s not easy: I understand that Green gave Brown some space, but, by 11 points, with 14 on the clock, I do not like this shot. The Celtics had little room for error at this point, so they would have to look for more than one action, one possession, unless the guy defending this isolation is a weak defender. After hearing Boston mourn his “stagnant” offense at the end of the game in the previous game, that was a harsh look. Udoka suggested that fatigue may have affected the group’s decisions throughout.
7. The Wiggins save the day
I thought this was a terrible decision by Andrew Wiggins before the shot went off:
Carrie looks at Wiggins after the pass, pointing to Thompson first and then shouting the ball himself. Wiggins has other ideas, takes two dribbles and goes to a right hook against Horford. It seemed overly ambitious to me, but maybe it shouldn’t have been – he had already made a lot of controversial bounce shots and would have made it almost identical a few minutes later against Williams.
Wiggins finished with 26 points in 12-to-23 shots, plus 13 rebounds. He got his points in many ways, not just by crashing the glass, running on the floor and hitting 3s spot-up. (In fact, he lost all six of his attempts for 3 points.) When Carrie was cold and the team needed him to save an possession, he had to. What a turn.
“He definitely has confidence,” Kerr said. “He definitely enjoys the playoffs. He loves the challenge. He loves the competition. And he found such a crucial role in our team and I think that strengthens him. He knows how much we need him, so he was fantastic.”
8. GPII frees Steph
By 10 a.m. to less than five minutes on the clock, Golden State made reliable suspension separations – Peyton passes Green around the perimeter and then sets up a screen for Carrie, only this time Carrie did not use it, instead of cut the paint, where Green found him for a float: It’s a great read by Curry with Smart locking it in and it’s another perfect pass from Green. But it is also an example of the Warriors getting used to their opponent – they know that Williams ignores Payton, which makes him a dangerous screener. And Curry knows that Williams expects it to come off the screen on the left side, so the rim protector is just one or two steps too far to reach the shot.
9. Not the kind of “power” you want
The following is Tatum who leads to the left against Wiggins, raises his dribble and misses a turn over Green: No passage, no sorting, nothing. The Warriors are very good defensively …
