My short attention span tonight has turned what
I thought to be a narrative-based game recap into a bullet point post. Enjoy!
- The Warriors starting guards combined to shoot 10-32 from the field. The bench, the new supposed strength of the team, was 7-18 from the field. The fact they only lost by 2 and had a chance to win at the buzzer was very unexpected.
- With 4:11 left in the 4th, the Warriors were down 89-78. Going to go out on a limb and say that most teams the W’s play this year will execute slightly better than the Kings did down the stretch.
- That said, aside from a Curry transition 3, all the W’s scoring down the stretch came from shots inside of 10 feet or from free throws caused by guys driving to the rim. With 11 seconds left and the Warriors down 1, they were able to inbound the ball to Bogut in the post, who passed to Klay running off a screen for an open 15 footer. Klay missed the jumper, but it was a great look on a high percentage shot. As many joked on twitter (guilty as charged) this play in years past would have been an iso play for Monta who would have held the ball for too long and fired a low percentage shot.
- DeMarcus Cousins scored 23 points on 16 shots and grabbed 15 rebounds. He torched whoever was guarding him with post ups, face ups, jump shots, and just about every skill you’d want a big man to posses. Not even sure a 100% healthy Andrew Bogut will be able to do anything to stop him in the future. The 2 of them even got into a little scuffle at one point, each getting a technical. Needless to say I’m beyond excited to watch those 2 go at it (hopefully) 3 more times this year.
- Bogut was only a +2 in his 19 minutes tonight, but its very easy to see how much better the Warriors are when he’s on the floor. Hopefully when he’s back to full strength we won’t see David Lee play 41 mins like he did tonight.
- Warriors’ killer Chuck Hayes is never impressive in the box score (4 points and 6 rebounds in 23 mins) but he is a nightmare for finesse power forwards like David Lee (he’s the type of physical, defensive minded big guy I’ve always thought the W’s needed). He forced Lee into a costly turnover down the stretch, which actually begged the question as to why the W’s would run a post set for Lee in that situation.
- I mentioned the bench struggling earlier. It was unrealistic to expect those guys, especially Landry, to keep playing at the level they were playing at. However, this is their 3rd road game already this season and bench players always perform better at home. Just mentioning that because 16 of the Warriors last 22 games are at Oracle this season.
- The Warriors next game is Wednesday night at home versus Cleveland. Is it a bit much to say that Game 5 is a must win game? I say NO! I’m expecting Kyrie to go off against Curry, but if the Warriors want to have any chance at all at making the playoffs, they absolutely need to win that one.
