The Warriors are done messing around: 3 takeaways from Game 1
By Ian Levy
For the first time in awhile, the Golden State Warriors were not the center of attention as the NBA playoffs began. They brought the focus back to themselves with a thorough drubbing of the Spurs in Game 1.
The Warriors did not win the 67 games that Vegas predicted for them this season. In fact, they didn’t even break 60. The Houston Rockets surpassed them for the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and with Stephen Curry out until at least the second round, Golden State seemed vulnerable in that was utterly unfamiliar.
At least until Game 1 began. The Warriors ran out to an 11-point lead in the first quarter and stretched things to 16 at the half. The final margin was 21 points, 113-92. Kevin Durant provided most of the scoring, dropping 16 in the first half, and finishing the game with 24, on 9-of-17 shooting, to go along with eight rebounds and seven assists. Klay Thompson chipped in 27 on 11-of-13 shooting as well.
The post-up game that sustained San Antonio’s offense in the regular season never really got going, and Rudy Gay and LaMarcus Aldridge went a combined 8-of-20 inside the arc. San Antonio was never really able to close the gap in the second half and, according to Inpredictable, Golden State’s win probability never dropped below 90 percent in the final 24 minutes. Not a bad way to start a title defense.
Takeaways
The Warriors can survive with Stephen Curry. Obviously, Curry raises the Warriors’ ceiling to an immense degree. The way he adds offensive gravity and stretches a defense’s attention is simply unlike any other player in the league. That being said, this is not the same Warriors team that lost the Finals to Cleveland with a hobbled Curry. Kevin Durant is different than Curry but he still brings their offense to an elite level, and can be just as difficult to guard, in his own way. The Houston Rockets are a stiff challenger but Durant, Thompson, Draymond Green, this bench and Curry, at any percentage, aren’t going to be an easy out either.
San Antonio’s inside game probably isn’t going to be enough. As mentioned above, the Spurs struggled inside the arc — shooting just 39.7 percent inside the arc. Aldridge was not his typically efficient self but Tony Parker also struggled to finish and no one else was able to get much going. The Spurs are going to need to score inside and outside the arc if they have any hope of staying with Golden State. And even that might not be enough.
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Controlling the inside is not just about size. The Spurs have a big size advantage in this series both physically and in terms of how they try to leverage it with their style of play. The speed and aggressiveness of the Warriors completely undid that in Game 1, outrebounding San Antonio 51-30 and outscoring them in the paint 34-22. If the Spurs can’t win those kinds of battles they don’t have much to hang their hat on.