In Thunder, Warriors are facing a test unlike any other

The Warriors were dealt another blow by the Thunder in Game 3 and find themselves in need of a win to come back in the series.

After the Warriors dropped Game 1 to the Thunder, the world panicked, and the Dubs responded with an emphatic win in Game 2. Stephen Curry did Stephen Curry things, Oracle was rocking, the blowout was in order, and the world was set back on its axis…for about four days.

Now, the Warriors have once again seen their world get flipped upside down and in danger of being sucked out of the Milky Way.

The Game 3 debacle — a 28-point drubbing — on Sunday night cannot simply be cast aside as “just one loss that the Warriors will bounce back from.” It was a loss that not only put them down 2-1 in the series but also showed the Warriors have not figured out how to slow down the beast that is Oklahoma City (and Draymond Green has yet to discover Steven Adams‘ absolute pain threshold, despite another valiant attempt).

You can look at the situation with the glass half full in that they have been in this position before. Last postseason, they dropped Game 3 to both the Grizzlies and Cavaliers with the series tied 1-1, and both losses were in blowout fashion. Both times, the Warriors answered the bell in Game 4 with resurgent road wins to re-take home court advantage and cruise to a series victory.

But the Thunder are clearly a different beast. The Grizzlies and Cavaliers had various flaws that made it easy for the Warriors to exploit, adjust and prevent the opponent from counter-punching, whether it was a simple switch on defense (Andrew Bogut on Tony Allen) or in the starting lineup (Andre Iguodala for Bogut).

It’s going to take much more than that for the Warriors to come from behind this time, due to the simple fact that the Thunder aren’t going to roll over the way the Grizzlies or Cavs did. The Grizzlies lacked sufficient firepower to sustain success against the Warriors, and the Cavaliers were without two stars.

There’s no doubt that Steve Kerr and Co. should receive credit for coming up with the right adjustments and executing them to perfection. But between Kevin Durant‘s dominance, Russell Westbrook‘s explosiveness, and the Thunder defense suffocating the Warriors’ supposed “Death Lineup” to the tune of a minus-22 plus-minus rating, coming up with a series-altering strategy will be that much more difficult.

Usually, Kerr’s solution to in-game problems is to bringing in that Death Lineup — Curry, Green, Iguodala, Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes — because they can hold their own on defense while creating so many mismatches on offense, not to mention the ability of all five guys to get out on the fastbreak and hit from distance.

Somehow, in this Bizarro World series that the Thunder have taken over, the Death Lineup did not live up to its moniker in Game 3. The dreadful plus-minus rating is one thing, but the lineup made just one field goal in seven minutes, shooting 1-of-16 from the field. In that span, the Thunder turned a one-possession game early in the second quarter into a 25-point halftime advantage and then stomped on the Warriors’ fleeting hopes of a comeback early in the third.

What’s troubling is that the Thunder can indeed answer the Warriors’ switch to the Death Lineup. Durant is a freak of nature, essentially a seven-foot guard and one of the few players in the league who can dominate the versatile Green. That was epitomized in one particular sequence in the second quarter, when Durant blocked Green’s layup attempt, grabbed the ball, dribbled up the floor and hit a pull-up three that blew the roof off the building. If someone can out-Draymond Draymond, it’s Durant.

Then, you throw in an Adams, who is tough to move in the paint, or Serge Ibaka and Enes Kanter, two mobile bigs, and the Thunder easily weathered the Warriors’ lineup of doomsday.

Still, numbers and matchups aside, it’s hard to think that the Warriors are close to done. Nobody needs to remind them that they won 73 games, that they have a system that is as close to flawless and a utopia than any team in recent memory, that they’ve answered every calling, every criticism with an aura and moxie that has yesterday’s stars hooting and hollering that there’s no way the Warriors would have been this good in their era.

And yet, here looms another obstacle for the defending champions, a two-headed monster that has already slayed one of the beasts of the league and is on the cusp of taking down another.

The Warriors, for their own sake and the sake of the numerous hot takes that will emerge, need to find some answers. This is no way for a historic, transcendent 73-win team to go out, no way to shut up critics who say the Warriors are just a one-year fluke. Bringing the Death Lineup back to life, taking home court advantage back to Oracle and flipping the world back on its axis would be a start.