Down the stretch of the regular season, the Warriors never had the chance to get themselves ready for the playoffs the way that teams in their elite position usually do. Injuries kept them from playing a set rotation from game to game, and they had to concern themselves as much with getting or staying healthy as they did with sharpening their game for the postseason.
Although there was the feeling that even without Steph Curry for the first round, they would right themselves once the playoffs began, it was only that — a feeling. The Warriors entered the postseason like a smart student who’s pretty sure he knows the material but really would have liked more time to study for the final exam.
Enter the Spurs. San Antonio, with its long, distinguished NBA history, deserves better than to be dismissed as a mere tune-up for the more difficult tests the Warriors will face later in the playoffs, but through the first two games of their first-round series, the Spurs haven’t been much more than that. The Warriors could not have ordered up a better Round 1 opponent — one disciplined and well-coached enough to make them feel the heat for their lapses but lacking the firepower to truly burn them.
The Warriors' 116-101 win in Game 2 on Monday night was a case in point. After their dismantling of San Antonio in the opener, the flip-the-switch game after which Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said the Warriors played “the most stifling defense we’ve seen all year,” they regressed in the first half of Game 2. It felt suspiciously like the regular season again, with periods of carelessness with the ball (11 first-half turnovers) and less-than-inspired defense. They trailed by six at the half, and against any other team in the Western Conference playoff field, the deficit probably would have been at least doubled.
“I don’t think it was focus,” Klay Thompson said. “It’s the playoffs. It’s hard to have a smooth game every game, especially against the Spurs, because I’m sure they are motivated, and they played so hard that first half. They were so physical, knocking us off our cuts, fighting over every screen, forcing turnovers.”
Everything turned out fine in the end, with Thompson, who finished with 31 points heating up in the second half and combining with Kevin Durant (32) to carry the offense and Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala helping them turn up the defense. Overall, it was the kind of performance that should be good enough to handle the overmatched Spurs even when the series moves to San Antonio for the next two games. Without the mysteriously injured Kawhi Leonard, it would qualify as a major accomplishment for San Antonio just to push this series to a Game 5.
But it was also a reminder that the Warriors are still in the tune-up phase. In terms of reaching and sustaining the level of play they’ll need to get through the later rounds, they aren’t there yet. The Blazers or Pelicans await in the second round and neither team is likely to shoot an abysmal 14.3 percent (4 for 28) from behind the 3-point arc as the Spurs did in Game 2.
San Antonio was 26th in the league at 35.2 percent from 3 during the regular season. That makes the Spurs the worst 3-point shooting team in the playoffs, and they looked like it, misfiring so badly that by the second half they were passing up wide-open 3.
“It’s been like that on the road the entire year for us for whatever reason and it really showed up tonight,” Popovich said, referring to the 3-point brickfest.
The Spurs should be marginally more dangerous at home, but they still shape up as essentially the perfect sparring partner for the Warriors, presenting a series of challenges for the Warriors to go about solving.
Need some work on ball movement against an aggressive, physical defense? The Spurs provided it and the Warriors eventually adjusted nicely. Want to test the committee of centers’ ability to defend against an efficient low-post threat? San Antonio’s LaMarcus Aldridge played the role, with 34 points, but the Warriors contained him more effectively in the second half.
They even helped Green test his playoff volatility levels when he tangled with Spurs big man Davis Bertrans in pursuit of a rebound and came away with a flagrant foul for an elbow that ended up in the vicinity of Bertrans’ neck.
“Maybe it’ll get rescinded,” Green said. “I got caught in a chokehold, a WWE chokehold. Maybe. We’ll see. Who knows?”
Green could afford to be unconcerned about the incident, since it had little effect on the game or the series. Small lapses aren’t fatal against the Spurs, they’re just useful for diagnostic purposes, for determining where the Warriors need to improve. To return to the nearly played-out flip-the-switch metaphor one last time, it turns out that it’s more of a dimmer switch. The Warriors are gradually turning it in the right direction, but even though they are in control of this series, their light isn’t yet as bright as they’re going to need it to be.
— Reported from Oakland
(Top photo: Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)
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