No need to panic: The Warriors are back on track
By Eric He
The Warriors responded to a deflating Game 1 loss with a scintillating Game 2 blowout win, the kind of victory we’ve been accustomed to all season.
To be historically brilliant, as the Golden State Warriors are right now, is strange. Lose a game, and the world is ending, the 73-9 regular season was a fluke, and “jump-shooting, finesse teams” can’t win in this league.
But win a game, and all of a sudden the Warriors are back to being historically brilliant, transcendent, revolutionizing basketball.
Nowhere is such a bipolar syndrome more apparent than in the playoffs, when the stakes are high and overreaction is rampant. They did it when the Warriors fell behind 2-1 to the Grizzlies in the second round last year, and again when the Cleveland LeBrons jumped ahead by a game in the Finals.
And when the Thunder not only weathered the Warriors’ strong start in Game 1, but actually fought back, controlled the second half, and shut down the Splash Brothers, the Twitter-verse erupted in hot takes, trying to explain why the Warriors went cold in the fourth and how much trouble the defending champions were in.
All it took, though, was a two-minute span in the third quarter of Game 2 where Stephen Curry erupted and outscored the Thunder 15-2 by himself. He dazzled, dropped jaws, hit threes, turned around before they went in, and did all the other #ArrogantSZN things the MVP does.
Like that, a seven-point lead became a 20-point blowout, and any thoughts of the Thunder taking control of the series were wiped away.
Last postseason, the Warriors made several drastic changes to overcome their brief playoff pitfalls. Against the Grizzlies, they switched Andrew Bogut onto Tony Allen and dared “First Team All-Defense” into shooting his team out of the series. Against the Cavaliers, they went small, replacing Bogut with Andre Iguodala in the starting lineup and wreaked havoc on the heavier Cavs.
This time around, there were no drastic changes. They did revert back to the Tony Allen tactic by leaving Andre Roberson open, but on the whole, they simply played their game and won.
For a team that went 73-9 in the regular season and has not lost back-to-back games all year, “playing their game” usually equates to a win. They had 1-2 big spurts that extended their leads. They shot the three-pointer at a high level, out-rebounded the Thunder, and limited turnovers. This is the formula they’ve used all season long, and, unsurprisingly, the result was a blowout win.
So why the ruckus? Why was the Game 1 loss treated like a catastrophe? Because the Warriors are so good, so immortal that losing at home is unheard of. But the Thunder are good. They have two superstars, a towering frontcourt, and a defensive stopper. If they have everything working, and the Warriors beat themselves — as they did in Game 1 — the Thunder have a chance of winning.
That was the headline on Tuesday morning — that “the Warriors lost,” instead of “the Thunder won.” On Wednesday, the Warriors left no doubt what the Thursday headlines would read.
Still, Charles Barkley and the rest of the pundits will point to the fact that the Thunder still stole home court advantage. But to think that the Warriors would be concerned about grabbing — at the least — a split in Oklahoma City is laughable. For all they’ve accomplished, a team that went 34-7 away from home in the regular season is fully capable of winning anywhere.
If the Warriors had come out cold in Game 2 and fell into a 2-0 hole, then it would have been time for a serious look in the mirror. But what some thought — and wished — was the beginning of the end were instead doused with reality: the Warriors’ performance on Wednesday made Game 1 look like the aberration that it was. Curry and the Warriors are back on track, and ready to roll right through Oklahoma City.