Warriors playing for a lot more than OKC, and it showed in Game 5
Every bit of old magic Golden State found on Thursday will disappear if they don't back it up.
By
Bill Reiter
•
4 min read
OAKLAND -- So the magic lives. The idea that the Warriors could be the greatest NBA team of all time did not vanish, not yet, against another Thunder onslaught. That space between a single championship and something much, much grander remains within reach for Steph Curry and his Golden State Warriors.
For one more game, at least, those 73 wins can still be made the stuff of legend.
And make no mistake. There is no meaning behind 73 if the Warriors lose Game 6 in Oklahoma City or a Game 7, were it to occur, back at Oracle. The Thunder are playing for a championship, their first. The Warriors are playing, still, and barely, for so much more.
Record-setting regular season? It's meaningless minus the rings that make it forever.
On Thursday night, in a 120-111 win against the Thunder, the Warriors reverted, at least for a night, back to form. They moved the ball. They played at their pace without rushing, without giving up on that delicate balance between frenetic action and cautious execution that had powered those 73 wins in the first place.
And they got Steph Curry back, the real version, the spark plug that does what the eye says he can't but the final score insists he did.
His 31 points, seven rebounds, six assists and five steals -- each of which seemed to whip the swagger back into the building and its home team -- just scratched the surface of the change. Curry looked like Curry again, confident, lithe, able, and most importantly, capable of carrying much of the burden of trying to brush back not just defeat but the bitter disappointment that comes with letting all-time greatness slip away.
Ask the 2007 New England Patriots how much that 16-0 mark comforts them while the Giants are walking the earth with those championship rings. Ask Tiger Woods if those 14 majors quell the questions about Jack, or dull the edge of knowing what could have been. Ask every single old-timer who has questioned the true excellence of Curry and his team and its accomplishments this year -- Charles Barkley, Oscar Robertson, Scottie Pippen, any of them -- if they'll recognize anything beyond "I knew it" if the Warriors don't win it all.
There is a long, long way to go for redemption and I-told-you-sos. The Thunder still have a 3-2 series lead and a home game to crush Curry's and the Warriors' hopes. Durant and Westbrook combined to shoot 23 of 59 Thursday, and that could easily reverse itself next time around.
And the Warriors, this win not withstanding, have not yet won consecutive games in this series. If that holds, they're done.
But something, at least for this night, went back to what we expected. The Warriors still shot poorly on three-pointers, going just 9 of 24, but there was an intensity and belief throughout the game that had been missing. They didn't need their most celebrated weapon, largely because Golden State's defense found its claws again -- forcing 13 steals, blocking seven shots, seeing Draymond Green again look spectacular without getting in the way of his team or trying too hard. His 11 points and 13 rebounds were just what was needed.
And then there was Curry.
Any season-ending loss that follows will be on him. No matter claims that he's hurt, or not. No matter what his teammates do, or don't do. Like LeBron James, at this level of greatness you either win or you are the blame. Period.
He played like he knew it.
In fact, all game, it was as if in his play you could hear his words after their Game 5 loss: "The series isn't over. We've got to believe in ourselves. It's obviously frustration. It's a terrible feeling once again not stepping up and being ourselves and playing our game. But I think we're a special team that this isn't how we're going to go out. So we're going to figure out how we can take care of these next 48 minutes on Thursday, and then we'll talk again."
With 1:23 left in the game, that quote seemed to spring to life and find expression in Curry and the moment. The Warriors were up eight but the building still brimmed with tension, with doubt, and then Curry picked Durant's pocket. He sprinted ahead, slowed it down, then after a pause more like the team that never panicked he suddenly attacked the rim against Steven Adams. It was vintage Curry, the thing that had disappeared throughout this series and brought talk he was hurt, as he sliced ahead, had the kind of off-the-glass-english that sent Oracle into hysterics, and reminded us that these guys win by the doing the impossible. That's the Warriors way. Magic, in the form of basketball.
And for at least another game, that magic -- its 73 wins, its shot at history, and the go-to-hell heroics they'd cement if they were to come all the way back in this series and prove all those doubters wrong, again -- remains tantalizingly alive.
