Game Sevens take on many forms, and far more often than not the words "Game" and "Seven" are heavier on promise than delivery. In a world of rapidly shrinking attention spans, those games are expected to validate the results of Game Six, because we only recall the last thing we saw and imagine that the coaches are out of ideas.
Rarely, though, do Game Sevens deviate from the established norms of the preceding six games the way that Golden State and Houston did on Sunday night. We can start with the obvious plot line: Buddy Hield, Postseason Hero, a phrase making its debut in the English language here.
And yet, facts are facts, and the Warriors are advancing to the second round of the NBA playoffs after a comprehensive 103-89 victory ... on the road ... as a seven-seed ... with neither Stephen Curry nor Jimmy Butler The Third as the chief firestarter. No, the Rockets were determined not to lose their biggest game of the decade because they were neglectful or lazy when it came to the Warriors’ 1 and 1A, and they weren't. They chose to dare the other San Franciscii to beat them instead.
And then they did, and with a clinical efficiency that was neither Warriors-grade romantic nor Warriors-style elegant. They won thanks to the efforts of the offensive forces the Rockets didn't think could beat them—Hield and Draymond Green, most notably—and they won by going small and staying small. The Warriors won by taking care of their possessions, with which they are typically casual, and they won by refusing to fall for the various disruptive bait traps that the younger, stronger, and more obstreperous Rockets repeatedly laid before them. And they won without Curry until Hield made them cry, and without Butler until Green's outside shooting (yeah, you heard us) made them take him more seriously as well. And they won almost exclusively with the five players who started the game, a tactic most recently employed far less effectively by JJ Redick five days earlier.
Hield, though, was the most noticeable deviation from the norm that had made the Warriors seem so endangered in Game 6. He'd been noticed largely in passing during the first six games, to the point where Ime Udoka grew comfortable with the tactical notion of leaving Hield be in Warriors' offensive sets as they had Green. To put it cruelly yet accurately, Udoka decided that Hield wasn't worth worrying about.
And then on Sunday, Buddy Hield made all the shots he couldn't make in Games 5 and 6. He made his first five, including a 40-footer at the end of the first quarter, and ended up with 33 points on 15 shots taken from a total distance of 316 feet. In doing so, he so shattered Udoka's defensive plan that the Rockets not only abandoned the 3-2 zone that had been so effective earlier in the series but eventually dropped the hyperfocus on Curry and Butler that remains the true key to beating the Warriors. Curry had scored only once at the end of the first half but ended up with 22, plus 10 rebounds, and Butler with 20; both were very much more like themselves in the fourth quarter, and worked together to put the kids to bed. Golden State led for nearly 45 of the 48 minutes, and the victory can be fairly described as a schooling of some precocious yet naive young'uns.
In advancing to the second round and a series with Minnesota that begins Tuesday in Minneapolis, the Warriors will once again be smaller and older than their opponents. Going up 3-1 indicated this could happen before losing Games 5 and 6 suggested strongly that it wouldn't, and those two extra games will subtly take their toll eventually. This is just how it is going to be for the Warriors, and every added game causes the crankcase to spit up a bit more oil. Not only that, the Timberwolves have learned by watching that no strategy works forever against a bunch of wise guys who still have enough game to stay close and enough smarts alone that they’ll always be in range to close the rest of the gap. And finally, the Wolves will be more mindful of Buddy Hield. If you allow someone you didn't expect to score 33, that's on them, but if you let said someone score 33 twice, that's on you.
They will know, too, that the vestiges of the Warrior mystique remain in force, which is to say that you still have to kill them five times to get to four. Now Buddy Hield is part of that mythology.
