Golden State Warriors: 5 Reasons To Resist Game 2 Panic
1. Wakeup Call
No one on the Warriors other than Leandro Barbosa did their job. It was a pitiful loss and a pitiful effort in front of a crowd that had only seen this team lose twice all season long. But guess what? That’s a pretty damn good wakeup call for a contender that had been cruising to this point.
In Game 2, the Warriors committed 20 turnovers leading to 22 Grizzlies points. They scored only 90 points, the first time they scored 90 or less since Feb. 9. The Warriors only made six of their 26 three-point attempts (23.1 percent), a major drop-off from the absurd 41.5 percent they drilled during the regular season.
We could keep going. The Splash Brothers combined for 32 points, but it took them 34 shots to get there. Draymond Green shot 3-for-11 from the floor and was once again in early foul trouble. Curry wasn’t assertive when his team needed him to step up. Do you see ALL of those fluke-ish trends continuing for an entire seven-game series?
Green was in foul trouble in Game 1 as well, but he was a Defensive Player of the Year candidate for a reason. The Dubs were good when they had to resort to small-ball lineups in Game 2; they just weren’t good enough. In a seven-game series, outliers like last night even out.
The Grizzlies deserve credit for a terrific Game 2 performance, but let’s be honest: nobody would be surprised if all five of these reasons wound up making a lot of sense in three weeks, because by then, the Warriors may have closed out the series in five games.
Next: Stephen Curry: Top 10 Moments From His MVP Season
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