Winning one game — just one — of their second-round playoff series against the Timberwolves with superstar Steph Curry sidelined was always going to be a difficult task for the Warriors.
And one can’t help but wonder after the Dubs’ 102-97 loss if the team’s season was effectively ended by tired legs and soft foul calls.
Did Golden State just blow its best shot to extend the series to six games and a possible (just possible) Curry return?
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Warriors claim they are not ‘desperate’ after wasting vintage ‘Playoff Jimmy’ performance Why Warriors’ shooting woes are exacerbated without Steph Curry Curry-less Warriors squander big nights from Butler, Kuminga in Game 3 loss Warriors’ Kerr credits Timberwolves for response to racially charged incident With Curry sidelined, Warriors need Podziemski, Moody to return to form“When [Curry’s] not [playing], there’s no room for error. You can’t make mistakes. You can’t turn the ball over. You can’t give back all of those things. And then you’ve got to take the right shots. You’ve got to move the ball the right way. Because he’s the one individual for sure on this team, and maybe in the league, that can make sure you’re never out of any game,” Jimmy Butler said after Game 3.
And yet the Warriors did all of those things in critical moments.
Worse yet, they were doing so many things right before that.
Imagine if I had told you before Game 3 that:
• Jimmy Butler was going to shoot the ball 26 times, score 33 points • Jonathan Kuminga would add 30 points with 3-of-4 shooting from beyond the arc • The Warriors would hold Minnesota to 43 percent shooting • Minnesota would end the game with more turnovers than Golden State • The Wolves did not control the offensive glass
You would have presumed the Warriors would have won the contest. It was almost a perfect scenario for the Dubs.
So for that to lose the game is a gut punch of the highest order.
“We have to put our big boy pants on and go out and compete at a high level and get this one on Monday,” Butler said.
Butler’s game Saturday suggests it might not be a matter of either pants or willpower.
The Warriors had a five-point lead early in the fourth quarter Saturday. Playing through Butler on offense and into Draymond Green on defense, the Dubs had turned the game into a low-volume, high-efficiency, only-the-truly-proficient-will-survive playoff basketball game. Shorthanded and, in the cases of some Dubs, overwhelmed, Golden State was going to steal the game they needed.
But when Butler goes 1-for-7 from the floor in the final frame, including missing three shots at the hoop, and Green picked up two fouls in a matter of 18 seconds with under five minutes to play in the game — one via review and the second coming from a can’t-call-that-there decision from referee Mitchell Ervin — the Warriors were left floundering on both sides of the floor. Golden State lost the final frame by nine and the game’s critical moments (minute five to 1:17 remaining) by five.
You can’t win in the playoffs with only three-quarters of a game. Not when the margins are as tight as on Saturday.
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Warriors coach Kerr lauds Kuminga’s Game 3, mulls Butler’s minutes load Warriors’ defense comes and goes with Draymond Green in loss to Timberwolves Warriors claim they are not ‘desperate’ after wasting vintage ‘Playoff Jimmy’ performance Why Warriors’ shooting woes are exacerbated without Steph Curry Curry-less Warriors squander big nights from Butler, Kuminga in Game 3 lossIt has been suggested that Butler was saving his energy for Game 3. Yet, he didn’t have enough to get through the full game Saturday. When the Warriors needed him most, his legs weren’t there to make the shots needed to win.
How can anyone expect him to have a big Game 4 given the circumstances?
I can appreciate Butler’s healing ritual of dominoes, coffee, and kids (I don’t drink coffee and my children have allowed me to find new levels of exhaustion, but playing dominoes sounds fun!), but with due deference to his injury, the output has not been steady this postseason. It’s success is not an every-other-game circumstance, but it’s not far off. And Game 3 was an “on” game.
And if the Warriors don’t win Game 4, there’s next-to-zero chance they’re winning three straight to claim the series — with or without Curry. It’s simply too much to ask this team, with all its inconstancies, to make such a comeback.
As such, the stakes couldn’t be higher for the Dubs ahead of Monday’s game. The season is unquestionably on the line, but Butler is exhausted, Green is lost on offense without Curry and lacking the foot speed to execute everything he wants on the defensive end without being subject to the whistle, and the Warriors’ offense is now running the same kind of no-movement, drive-and-kick-with-a-bigger-ball-handler stuff that the Lakers did in the first-round against Minnesota — a five-game “gentleman’s” sweep for the Timberwolves, despite Minnesota’s offensive ineptitude in the series.
This is dire stuff, and all the Warriors can reasonably do is pray that Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski, and Buddy Hield to step up (or in the case of Kuminga, stay up) and save the season.
Perhaps they can — this postseason has been a steady series of surprises, both good and bad.
The way Monday is shaping up, they’ll need a good surprise for Game 4.
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