Kurtenbach: The Warriors might not have the firepower of the past, but never bet against championship DNA ...Middle East

SAN FRANCISCO — Across the street from Chase Center — perhaps within Steph Curry’s shooting range — is an office of CRISPR, whose DNA-editing technology won the Nobel Prize in 2020.

The Warriors don’t need their neighbors’ help anytime soon.

The Dubs might not have the same strength in their numbers that they once boasted. Curry and Draymond Green’s legs might not have as much in them as they once had. Jimmy Butler’s backside has undoubtedly seen better days. Is this team a title contender this season? It depends on how generous you are with the term.

But what the Warriors still have — what the Dubs cannot possibly lose — is championship DNA.

Related Articles

That term has been tossed around so often over the last decade-plus that you’ll be forgiven if it registers as trite or meaningless.

But you cannot deny that it was on full display in Saturday’s Game 3 between the Warriors and Rockets.

After a sluggish, arguably unwatchable start to the grind-it-out contest in which Houston dictated the terms of engagement, the Warriors tapped into something deep, spiritual, and perhaps even mythical to pull themselves back into the contest and eventually win it with a fourth-quarter blitz led by Curry, Green, and 2022 NBA Finals flipper Gary Payton II, who made all five of his shots and pulled down three big rebounds in the final frame.

The focal point of it all, of course, was Curry, who fought through the Rockets’ defensive gantlet to score 36 points in the Warriors’ 104-93 win.

“Whatever I’ve said the last 11 years after every one of these games, just copy and paste. He’s incredible,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after the game.

But, Steve, in all seriousness — a 37-year-old 6-foot-2 guard just lifted his team to a vital playoff victory over a No. 2 seed. Yes, the Warriors scored 99 points with Curry on the floor and five in the seven minutes he was on the bench.

Copy and paste?

“He’s Steph Curry. He’s one of the greatest players of all time,” Kerr said. “To play 41 minutes against that kind of defense… to have a slow start and then find his rhythm… to only turn it over twice against that kind of pressure. He was brilliant.”

And brilliant might still be underselling it.

Related Articles

Curry turned in another legacy game. How many is that against the Rockets now, a baker’s dozen?

He might have saved the Warriors’ once-lifeless, lately-promising season, too.

He went to a place only the truly special, the greatest of the greatest, can go, and found a way to take his team along for the ride.

Green noted after the game that he usually brings the necessary energy and force to games like Saturday’s. But he didn’t have it tonight. Curry sensed that and led the way.

“There was a moment in the second quarter where I had to get more assertive,” Curry said.

Green called it “beautiful.”

It was.

It was also ruthless.

“This series is all over the place. It’s not going to be a beautiful brand of basketball,” Curry said. “For us to withstand a rough start shooting the ball and find flow, obviously without Jimmy… It all came together.”

Had the Rockets won on Saturday — and it was heading that way for the majority of the game — they would have taken back home-court advantage in the series and been given the incalculable lift of beating the Warriors in the Bay. That means something for a young team going through its first NBA playoff journey.

Instead, they felt the game slip out from under them. Green entered the defensive shadow realm in the fourth quarter — the Rockets shot only 38 percent in the lane in the contest. The Warriors’ role players stepped up big when the moments were big — Buddy Hield closed and had 17 points, while Quinten Post had 12 rebounds.

And then Curry did what Curry always seems to do to Houston.

All while Chase Center was filled with the eerie chant of “Waaaaaariors.”

This wasn’t playoffs 101 — this is the advanced course.

And the Warriors were the professors.

With the Rockets’ inexperience and offensive deficiencies, this series was going to Golden State after they won Game 1—as long as their players stayed on the court.

But Butler played only eight minutes in Game 2 — the Warriors were far more competitive in that contest than they deserved to be — and then was in a full brown ensemble on the bench for Game 3. (Butler, brown? It’s all a bit too on-the-nose, Jimmy.)

In an evenly matched series, the Rockets would have an advantage right now, up 2-1 and with two games at home yet to play.

But it’s not even. The experienced Warriors have always held the trump card.

“You have to be able to understand the flow [of the game],” Curry said. “We’ve been in this situation plenty of times. It’s just how you play. You understand the moment.”

And the series is flowing the Warriors’ way. And Golden State is optimistic that Butler will be back for Game 4, which is now a de facto killshot game.

That’s what was on the line Saturday.

That’s why Curry’s performance was so massive; why the Dubs’ turnaround in the contest was so significant.

And that’s what championship DNA does in the playoffs.

You don’t need it every night, but on nights like Saturday, you have to call on it.

And the Dubs still have it in spades.

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Kurtenbach: The Warriors might not have the firepower of the past, but never bet against championship DNA )

Also on site :

• Death toll in Iran port explosion mounts to 25
• Several killed as car rams into crowd at Vancouver festival
• My grandfather survived Nazi concentration camps – now it’s my duty to crush Hamas & save Israel, says Brit dad