NBA Finals: For Warriors, it now comes down to epic season or epic fail
Golden State is on the verge of the unthinkable
By
Ken Berger
•
5 min read
CLEVELAND -- Stephen Curry sat at his locker, rolled up his compression pants and went to work. There was a lot of tape to remove from his right knee, and it wasn't going to remove itself.
All around his knee, the medical tape encased the joint like a makeshift brace, covering everything but the kneecap. He carefully tore eight strips off, rolled them up into little balls and set them on the floor. Finally, he broke out the scissors and removed the rest.
Earlier, he'd picked up the peel from the banana he'd eaten while in the locker room following his ejection in the fourth quarter of Game 6 in the NBA Finals and walked toward a garbage can.
"Excuse me," he said to a reporter standing in the way. "Don't worry, I'm not going to throw anything at you."
Curry was calm and contrite after a second straight championship clincher had gone awry Thursday night -- this time, in Cleveland, the site of the Warriors' title celebration one year ago. During the game, the two-time MVP lost it.
He and the Warriors just hope it doesn't mean they've lost something much bigger.
"At the end of the day," Curry said, at the end of a 115-101 loss to the Cavaliers that evened the Finals at 3-3, "seven games to figure out who's going to be holding that trophy on Sunday, you've got to love that kind of environment and that kind of battle. Haven't enjoyed it much the last two games, but there are 48 minutes left."
Forty-eight minutes left in what could be a record-breaking season that goes up in smoke. In Game 7 on Sunday at Oracle, and the 73-win golden boys need to find a way to win one more. With another exquisite performance from LeBron James, who seems hellbent on burying Curry and his MVP trophy on the logo at Oracle, the Cavs have the champs on the ropes.
"We know what kind of team we are, what we're capable of, what we've accomplished so far," Curry said. "We haven't splintered at all."
But what the Warriors accomplished from October until this point -- including a stirring comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the Western Conference finals against Oklahoma City -- won't help them on Sunday. For starters, the team that accomplished all of that may not have splintered, but it's come apart in other ways.
Curry had 30 points on 8-for-20 shooting on Thursday night, but everything was difficult -- including the fourth-quarter layup attempt that James gleefully swatted into the second row. It was a handful, followed by an earful, from the King, who lit Curry up with some trash talk -- the contents of which Curry wouldn't divulge.
"Nothing," Curry said in the interview room, closing an imaginary zipper across his lips.
It was that very mouth from which Curry had pulled his mouth guard after picking up his sixth foul with 4:22 left in the fourth. He whipped it toward the scorer's table, something he has done on a couple of occasions this season. Like an errant Frisbee, it soared into the stands and hit Andrew Forbes, son of Cavs minority owner Nate Forbes, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
Curry was ejected, and before making the long walk toward the locker room, he shook hands with the fan and apologized.
"I usually aim at the scorer's table," Curry said. "I was off aim."
Based on league precedent for such offenses, Curry faces a fine, but not a suspension. He and coach Steve Kerr also will make charitable contributions for ripping the officiating in the postgame news conferences. That's to say nothing of Curry's wife, Ayesha, who went on a scathing Twitter rant after the game, alleging it was "absolutely rigged for money."
She later deleted the tweet, explaining, "Police racial profiled my father and told him to remove credentials and tried to arrest him. It's been a long night for me. I apologize."
Said Kerr: "He's the MVP of the league. He gets six fouls called on him, three of them were absolutely ridiculous. He steals the ball from Kyrie [Irving] clean at one point. LeBron flops on the last one. Jason Phillips falls for that, for a flop. As the MVP of the league, we're talking about these touch fouls in the NBA Finals."
Wow, 73 seems like a long time ago.
"If you started the season in October and said you'd be home for Game 7 with a chance to win the NBA Finals," Curry said, "you've got to love that kind of opportunity, regardless of how it happened."
That's fair, but so is this: This isn't the same Warriors team that opened its title defense in October. It's not even the same Warriors team that we saw a week ago.
And this, too: While it's true that teams facing a 3-1 deficit are 0-32 in the Finals, how many of those were under the old 2-3-2 format? The league went to the current 2-2-1-1-1 only three years ago, and it's the most significant of distinctions.
The mighty Warriors have lost three of the last four games -- one at Oracle and two here -- after taking a 2-0 lead. They've lost Andrew Bogut to a knee injury. In Game 6, Andre Iguodala's back locked up and he was moving more like a weekend warrior at the YMCA than the Finals MVP candidate that he was just two games ago
They've lost Harrison Barnes to the witness protection program. Barnes was 0-for-8 on Thursday night, making him 2-for-22 in the last two games. Draymond Green allegedly returned from his one-game suspension, but the only time anyone noticed he was out there was when LeBron was blocking his shot at the rim.
And under this onslaught from James, who imposed his will from the first to the 48th minute with a second straight 41-point game, the Warriors lost their cool.
But not their confidence, Kerr tried to explain. The more he went on, the more it sounded like he was trying to talk himself into it.
"Our confidence comes from being the defending champions, from winning at an incredibly high rate the last two years," Kerr said. "And let's be frank, we were put in a pretty difficult position in Game 5 without one of our best players, and we didn't respond well enough. We needed to play better in Game 5. But we'll have Draymond for Game 7. We'll have our home crowd. We'll have everybody but Boges. We missed Boges tonight, but we still feel very confident that we can win without him. Like I said, you get one home game to win the NBA title, that's not a bad deal."
Here's the thing: Injuries and attrition and two colossal performances from LeBron have the Warriors looking as vulnerable as they have in two years.
The MVP and his fellow golden boys lost their cool on Thursday night. Now, they have 48 hours to get ready for 48 minutes that will determine whether they've lost much more than that.
