The Golden State Warriors nearly didn’t win Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals, but they did just enough to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers 124-114 in overtime.
Here’s three things we can take away from Thursday night.
Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals confirmed what we’ve known for quite some time now: the Golden State Warriors are indeed an incredibly lucky team. Just like Draymond Green said after Thursday night’s 124-114 win over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers:
“Sometimes, you need a little luck. It’s good to be lucky sometimes, so I’ll take it.”
Because let’s be real: the Warriors should have lost that game — at least, in regulation. Instead, they’ll head back to Oracle Arena on Sunday with a 1-0 series lead, which they’ll more than likely push to 2-0 before heading to Quicken Loans.
Draymond Green: “You gotta know the score.” And then wait until you see his face when he finds out J.R. Smith claimed he knew the score was tied. pic.twitter.com/WgDhgoK0NL
— The Athletic Bay Area (@TheAthleticSF) June 1, 2018
Much like how this team came into existence, Thursday night at Oracle Arena was simply a perfect storm of unlikely events. There’s absolutely no denying that. It just so happened to work in Golden State’s favor.
In the following slides, I’m going to attempt to break down a few of the things that went right and a few other things that went wrong for the defending champs, as well as what kind of impact we can expect Game 1 to have on the rest of the series.