3 areas the Golden State Warriors were abused in Game 5
The Golden State Warriors had one of the worst postseason performances of all time on Wednesday night. It was an ugly showing from a team with title aspiration, losing by 39 points. The Memphis Grizzlies won Game 5134-95.
It’s even worse than it seems as Memphis outscored the Warriors by ten or more points in the first 3 quarters and then lost the fourth 28-15. The lead was 27 at the half and blossomed to 52 by the end of the third.
The Golden State Warriors won both home games and then were incredibly disappointing against the Grizzlies despite Ja Morant being sidelined.
For a team with a two-time MVP and two All-Star starters, being destroyed in this fashion is wildly unacceptable. They’ll get to retool and regroup for Game 6 on Friday though which will offer them another chance to close out the series.
Where did things go wrong though?
For starters, the rebounding edge is something that must be noted. The Warriors had 33 defensive rebounds to the Grizzlies’ 37. It’s on the offensive glass that Memphis was finally able to get loose, having the best regular-season offensive rebounding rate.
They ended with 18 offensive boards which crushed the Warriors’ 4.
Secondly, turnovers were a massive issue, another reason Golden State found themselves in an early hole. The Dubs had 22 turnovers while the Grizzlies had just 9.
While it didn’t determine the game, that was certainly a key reason in the outcome. Draymond Green and Jordan Poole had a combined 9 turnovers despite only playing 22 and 20 minutes respectively.
Lastly, we see that free-throw shooting had a huge discrepancy.
The Warriors took just 13 attempts from the line whereas the Grizzlies finished the game at 30. Memphis was just overall the far more aggressive team, and the box scores, regardless of the final score, show just that.
Coming into this series, we knew turnovers were going to be an issue.
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The Warriors’ lack of size was always going to be a clear disadvantage as well. Moving forward, if they want to close out this series, they must fix at least the first of these two outstanding problems.