It’s not is concrete victory. Neither East match itself. Is another thing: the gestures, the spark from the stands, the alarm clock on time. There are somethingat least until proven otherwise, terrifying for the rest of the NBA in these liturgies in the Bay, these nights when things do click; The crowd roars, Klay Thompson hits transition 3-pointers, Draymond Green directs frantic defenses and Kevon Looney saves possessions with his big body, a bounce attack hit. Whoever doesn’t think at the moment that the atmosphere of this game against the Blazers (118-112 final) means problems for the rest of the West, and surely the League, it is that it has been sleeping for almost a decade.
Missing Andrew Wiggins, who is about to return, and missing Stephen Curry, the master key. But the Warriors are leading the way, meeting again just in time, reviewing the lesson. They are the best team in their home court (16-2), where they have four consecutive victories in a stretch of eight games that, and it was the moment to do it, they are taking advantage of to put themselves let’s do it. Outside they are the worst (3-16), a contrast that suggests that the accidental is the second, the bad. Especially when Curry returns, of course. Meanwhile, laziness is left behind, the bad faces begin to be a thing of a past that in two blinks has seemed remote. Steve Kerr, or so it seems, is on his way to get it back. The changing room seems healed and the rotation begins to take shape. When Wiggins comes back, all the better. And when Curry returns… Oh.
The Warriors in the fourth quarter against the Blazers were, whoever wore the jerseys, the usual warriors. Boiling, with an unbearable temperature for the rival, they scratched an improbable comeback, from 85-96 almost at the end of the third quarter, with the wind totally in favor of some growing Blazers, and a 102-110 five minutes from the end. . There came the coventhe war cry that has been consuming wills for years: a 12-0 run (up to 114-110) for a team in pack version, inexhaustible in defense and directed in attack by the eternal Klay Thompson and the cramps of Jordan Poole doing origami with Curry’s reflection. With that and a defensive push coordinated by Green and expanded by DiVincenzo, Kuminga and Looney, the Warriors took a game that looked like they were going to lose and they close the year positively (19-18), ninth in the West, already re-enlisted two games from the fourth. But, I insist, it is not only that. There is something else, an atavistic call, an obvious warning signal for everyone else…
The Blazers came out asleep, pitiful. Overwhelmed by the activity of the Warriors and the initial boiling of Klay Thompson, they trailed 31-13 in nine minutes and 41-26 at the end of the first quarter. In the casualty count, they did not have Nurkic and they have been without Gary Payton all season, so important in the Warriors title and signed in the summer by the Oregon franchise. That guard toughness is something a team that melted down in the heat of battle will need. That he played very well to turn the game around and put it on his side… but that he could not close it when the Warriors land, sea and air assault came. Damian Lillard, also raised in Oakland, knows that feeling well. He’s felt it a thousand times in his bones over the last few. If the Warriors roar…
Lillard finished with 34 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists. He brought his team out of the grave and had phases where he seemed unstoppable. But he finished with a 12/29 shot and he didn’t know, he’s done it a thousand times, to score when he had to. In the final sequence, already at the last minute and with 114-112, DiVincenzo stole the ball from him and, a handful of seconds later, hit the game-breaking 3-pointer. The escort not only begins to be in his new team: he is learning to play Warriors basketball. Kuminga was also on the track, and with a lot of participation, in the tsunami of the last quarter. Looney grabbed 8 attack rebounds and 11 in total, Green finished at 10+11+4, Klay made 7 triples and had 31 points and Poole, with some losses that could be catastrophic, finished with 41, 6 assists and 5 triples.
The Blazers, neither hot nor cold, are 18-17. After almost half a season, it is difficult to know if they are in a position to take the stride that many expected of them.. The Warriors, who have hunted them down in the standings, have already died several times this season only to discover that, almost at the equator, they are still perfectly alive And with Curry devouring dates to the countdown to his return. If I were any of the other hopefuls from the West, I’d start to worry.
