As the Warriors bathed in the luminous joy of ending the Los Angeles Clippers' cursed season, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr offered five perfect words. "For one night," he grinned, "we're us." The 10th-seeded Warriors truly were their old selves, and not in the pejorative sense, turning around what had been a frustratingly out-of-reach play-in game against the ninth-seeded Clippers with some of the purest Warriorball anyone has seen all season, for a 126-121 win.
I write the final score out there for emphasis, as the Warriors had been tracking to hit around 100 until the last 9:35 of the game, in which they scored 41 points. The Clippers held a 13-point lead at that 9:35 mark, and the Warriors did not seem to have the juice. They'd cobbled together some mildly functional offense, especially in the third quarter, as Steph Curry and Draymond Green piloted their two-man screen-and-dive hivemind over to interact with Kristaps Porzingis, though the effort it took them to get good shots was visibly taxing. All game, they would cut double-digit Clippers leads down to three or so, upon which they would get exhausted, L.A. would instantly start trying, and the lead would quickly balloon back up to double digits. Derrick Jones Jr. was mostly great defending Curry, especially one-on-one in space, Bennedict Mathurin was particularly good, and L.A. shot well from three on the night.
Golden State, meanwhile, was playing an eight-man rotation that had scarcely played together all season. The Warriors had a really tough year, first finding themselves embroiled in a Jonathan Kuminga saga of their own making, then losing Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody to catastrophic knee injuries, then limping into the 10th seed as both Curry and Porzingis sustained injuries of their own. Watching the Warriors in March and April was a brutal experience, with Pat Spencer running the show, Charles Bassey anchoring the frontline, and Malevy Leons playing a big role. They had all the aesthetic bustedness of a tanking team, but not the incentives.
Around this time many observers wondered what the point of all this was. Curry was suffering from an overuse injury, and with limited magic left, the seemingly sensible path of packing it in for next year presented itself. Why not regroup ahead of what might be Curry's final healthy campaign? What was the point of pushing for the right to be annihilated by the Oklahoma City Thunder?
The point is that Curry is such a special player that pushing to put him in position to win is always worth it. So, with his team facing a big deficit Wednesday night, he got to work.
A critical moment came well before the comeback, halfway through the third quarter, when Green cracked Jones Jr. with a totally legal and absolutely brutal screen. Getting his bones rattled slowed Jones Jr. just a tiny bit, and Curry, who'd scored eight points on grisly 2-for-9 shooting in the first half, went for 16 points in the quarter, which ended with Golden State having scrabbled within five points of the hosts. Still, L.A. pulled back ahead, with Darius Garland particularly dangerous getting into the lane and nailing threes. He hit a stepback to put the Clippers up nine with 6:36 left to play.
That's when the Warriors really turned it on. It began with Gui Santos abusing Garland down low for a bucket (this happened all night, and as dynamic as Garland was on offense, the Warriors were merciless in attacking him). Al Horford then hit a popout three, then a corner three, and then, sandwiched around layups by Curry and Santos, two more threes, the second of which gave Golden State a lead with just over two minutes remaining. Curry—who finished the night 7-for-12 from deep, eating a diet of barely open shots, most from well behind the arc, most with two guys bearing down on him—then hit the biggest three of the night, a ridiculous sidestepping wonder in space, to put the Warriors up three with 50 seconds left to play.
It was at this point I began to wonder: Why is Draymond Green in the game? Green was hobbled by what looked like a knee injury, and Curry and Horford were playing two-man stuff, with Green parked in the corner. But then Green won the game for the Warriors with two incredible steals in the final minute. First, he disrupted and swatted away an inbounds pass, then he straight up swiped it from Kawhi Leonard on what wound up being L.A.'s final consequential possession of the game. Leonard's only fourth-quarter points came on a pointless dunk with the game already sealed.
Golden State's defense in the clutch was amazing. Horford had one possession where he played every little action right, roaming into and out of and back into the paint at the right time to snuff one play out. Santos stood Mathurin up in space twice. Brandin Podziemski grabbed a few huge boards. When they play like this, it's special stuff. All the old guys were making it happen! They prompted Chris Paul to get petty on Instagram! It was a showcase for Millennial Excellence.
Will the Warriors beat the Phoenix Suns in the second play-in game and set up an uncle-versus-nephew first-round series against the Thunder? Who knows, and also, wrong question. Don't look to the future with the Warriors. Just watch what's in front of you. These guys will not play like this forever. The passage of time has already posted several huge dubs on Golden State, and it will continue to do so. But there is still something incredible within Curry, and still time to marvel at it.
