Steph Curry, Jordan Poole, and Klay Thompson combine for 84 points and the Warriors blow out the Nuggets in game 2.
The Warriors' three star guards explode in a game eerily reminiscent of game 1, Steph Curry looks spry, Nikola Jokic gets ejected, Steve Kerr's rotations without Andre Iguodala, and more.
My notes on the first quarter of tonight’s game are far less meticulous than they usually are because I spent much of the opening period on the phone with a local sushi spot that managed to not deliver my food despite being only blocks away from my apartment — I ordered takeout specifically so I wouldn’t miss a second of tonight’s game, not out of laziness — but in the end, my less-than-rigorous notes didn’t really matter all that much because game 2 of the Warriors and Nuggets’ first-round series followed a script that was practically identical to game 1.
The Warriors looked mortal in the opening minutes of the game as they threw the ball away, committed fouls, and gave up easy buckets to the Nuggets in transition. What was different in tonight’s game was that Andre Iguodala didn’t play because of neck spasms and in what would have been his second-quarter minutes, the Warriors’ second unit played poorly and fell behind as many as 12 points. But in tonight’s game, Steve Kerr was quicker to the lineup that is quickly becoming legendary — Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green. In the final 6 minutes of the first half, that lineup turned an 8-point deficit into an 8-point lead with ruthless and frantic efficiency.
The Nuggets never really recovered from the Warriors’ run at the end of the second quarter and it’s possible that we’ll look back at this second consecutive end-of-half run as the moment that Denver the series effectively ended. The Nuggets looked defeated in the early minutes of the third quarter and before Steph Curry and Jordan Poole had played a single second-half minute together, the Warriors’ had reached 17 points and the game felt pretty much out of hand. When Poole joined his veteran superstars with a couple of minutes left in the period, he took over the game while his legendary backcourt mates sat back and enjoyed the show:
The Nuggets briefly got the game within 18 points around the 9-minute mark of the period, but Nikola Jokic’s ejection about two minutes amounted to a white flag for a Denver team that looked totally out of its element. There’s some symbolic symmetry here in Jokic getting tossed in the early fourth quarter only a game after his backup center, DeMarcus Cousins, suffered the same fate. As I type recap, reporters are probably asking Nuggets’ players not only about Jokic’s ejection, but a heated argument between Will Barton and DeMarcus Cousins during a timeout.
Two ejections in two nights, two huge end-of-quarter Warriors runs, two blowout losses, and two explosive scoring nights from Jordan Poole do not bode well for the Nuggets. The next game in this series is on Thursday night and while there are now reports that Nuggets’ sharpshooting forward, Michael Porter Jr., might join Jamaal Murray in a possible return in this series, it seems unlikely that the end result of this series will be anything other than a Warriors’ sweep or 5-game victory.
Before we get into it the game quarter-by-quarter, a few numbers, and stray thoughts:
Steph Curry looked like Steph fucking Curry tonight and finished the game with 34 points on 17 shots in under 23 minutes. Seems good! My favorite Curry moment was this one, where he looked pretty spry creating the space he needed to get this step-back three off against JaMychal Green:
Klay Thompson scored 21 points on 19 shots and played a game-high 35 minutes and 48 seconds. Two things stood out to me about Klay’s game tonight; his shot looked right today — the way his shots arced and the way he held his follow throw looked like vintage Klay tonight — and he made shots exactly when the Warriors needed it. Advanced stats have always undervalued Klay Thompson and one thing they cannot measure is his sense of the moment his ability to hit shots that are desperately needed and/or utterly devastating to the Warriors’ opponents.
Draymond Green finished the game with 6 points, 3 rebounds (???), 6 assists, 3 steals, a block, and 4 turnovers. This stat line severely undersells his impact on tonight’s game. Draymond was typically incredible defending Nikola Jokic — he was also quite handsy, which I’m sure we’ll hear more about in the days to come — and his aggression in pushing the ball up the court and directing traffic in transition created a few easy looks for the Warriors.
Andrew Wiggins, who has been pushed down the pecking order by Jordan Poole’s emergence is now in his proper offensive role as a fourth option and only took 9 shots. Wiggins took a few dumb step-back two’s with his foot just in front of the line, but that’s a small price to pay if he’s going to keep rebounding like a power forward — Wiggins had 8 rebounds in 30 minutes, following up his game of 9 rebounds on Monday. I’d like to see that continue!
Steph Curry was the only Warriors’ bench player to hit a three-pointer tonight other than Otto Porter Jr., who went 1/4 from deep. Of course, Steph isn’t really a bench player and neither is Jordan Poole, should he ever hit the bench again. This is to say, the Warriors have now blown out the Nuggets twice despite the fact that only OPJ and Juan Toscano-Anderson are the only Warriors’ bench players who have hit threes in this series. You can only imagine what this series might look like if Otto Porter Jr. starts hitting shots.
As for the Nuggets, well, it wasn’t great. Nikola Jokic scored 26 points on 20 shots before getting tossed but he only had 4 assists in tonight’s game. Will Barton, who started the game out hot, finished with 12 points on 15 shots and he tied with Bones Hyland and Monte Morris as the Nuggets’ second-leading scorers tonight. One potential bright spot for the Nuggets: Bryn Forbes hit some shots off of the bench, as did DeMarcus Cousins. The Nuggets’ role players should play better at home on Thursday night and while I don’t think they’ll turn a game for the Nuggets on their own, they should make this series more competitive in Denver.
Rotation watch:
1st Q:
12:00 — Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Looney: 0-0, tie game.
7:10 — Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ/Green: 7-9, Nuggets lead.
6:32 — Curry/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ/Green: 7-11, Nuggets lead.
3:25 — Curry/GPII/Wiggins/OPJ/Bjelica: 15-24, Nuggets lead.
1:59 — Curry/GPII/Poole/OPJ/Bjelica: 21-26, Nuggets lead.
In the first two minutes of the game, Kevon Looney was called for two fouls defending Nikola Jokic. Leading up to tonight’s game, central figures in both the Nuggets and the Warriors organizations talked to the press about the physical play in game 1 and the lack of free throws for Nikola Jokic — it was predictable that the whistles would blow early. The first of these fouls were rather soft and the second only slightly more justifiable. You can see those fouls below:
But rather than pull Kevon Looney after the second foul, Steve Kerr kept his big man in... and it worked, kind of. Looney did not pick up his third foul, but Jokic did keep cooking against pretty much any and all defenders. At one point in the quarter, Jokic had scored 10 of the Nuggets’ 13 points on the night. By the time the Nuggets led 18-9, Will Barton had scored 8 of his own points (cue the Bob Fitzgerald hysterics) and nearly outscored the Warriors.
The first round of Steve Kerr’s substitutions followed the same pattern as game 1 and Steph Curry was the direct replacement for Jordan Poole. But Poole did not sit the rest of the quarter as he did on Saturday night and instead came back in at the 1:59 mark of the period. The Warriors proceeded to close out the quarter by scoring five points in that span of time to end an otherwise rough quarter trailing by only one point.
2nd Q:
12:00 — Poole/GPII/Thompson/OPJ/Bjelica: 25-26, Nuggets lead.
8:12 — Poole/Wiggins/OPJ/Green/Bjelica: 31-39, Nuggets lead.
6:02 — Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green: 35-43, Nuggets lead.
0:46 — Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Looney: 57-50, Warriors lead.
0:08 — Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ: 57-51, Warriors lead.
Andre Iguodala’s absence forced Steve Kerr to tinker with rotations out of necessity. Iguodala operates as a quasi-point forward in the second unit and he helps maximize Jordan Poole’s off-ball motion. You’d think that replacing Iguodala’s playmaking with the offensive firepower of Klay Thompson wouldn’t necessarily hurt the Warriors, but that wasn’t the case early in the second period. Klay hit two mid-range jumpers early in the quarter and after an airball on an overly enthusiastic ISO against DeMarcus Cousins — who somehow held his own defending in space — the Nuggets started to pull away. Cousins hit a three and then made a dexterous layup on the roll to put the Nuggets up 5 and then things got ugly.
Draymond Green subbed in for Klay Thompson at the 8:12 mark and promptly committed a very dumb turnover in transition passing the ball to no one in particular. Things were looking bleak and then, Steve Kerr turned to the Death Lineup 3.0/the Max Five/the DeadPoole Lineup of Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green. Some people have cautioned against applying a nickname to a lineup that has only played uh... one game together and is not yet proven... but the early returns on this lineup are overwhelmingly good and definitely worthy of a nickname.
When Klay Thompson checked in at the 6:02 mark, the Warriors trailed 53-45. The Warriors took their first lead of the game at the 4:11 mark on a Steph Curry layup. When Steve Kerr finally made some subs to go offense for defense and vice versa n the final minute of the quarter, the Warriors led 57-50. Seems good! Here’s a defensive highlight from those glorious minutes of the Death Lineup 3.0:
3rd Q:
12:00 — Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Looney: 57-51, Warriors lead.
6:08 — Curry/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ/Green: 72-62, Warriors lead.
2:31 — Curry/Poole/Wiggins/OPJ/Bjelica: 88-71, Warriors lead.
2:20 — Curry/GPII/Poole/OPJ/Bjelica: 89-71, Warriors lead.
0:18 — Curry/Poole/Thompson/OPJ/Bjelica: 101- 81, Warriors lead.
The Warriors’ explosion of offense in the final minutes of the 1st half gave them something of a cushion to start the third quarter. But the Warriors pushed their lead to 12 points before Steph Curry came back into the game and along the way, Jordan Poole was fouled on a three-point make and another missed three, Draymond Green hit his own three, and Green made use of Klay Thompson’s gravity to create an easy dunk for Andrew Wiggins, which you can see below:
Speaking of Draymond — his defense on Nikola Jokic was absolutely spectacular. This play, where he gets switched onto Jokic in the middle of the court, was special:
The Warriors’ substitution patterns in the third quarter were pretty much identical to the first quarter; Steph Curry and Otto Porter Jr. replaced Jordan Poole and Kevon Looney, and in that lineup’s minutes, the OG Splash Brothers took over and scored 14 straight points between them, which set the stage for Jordan Poole to take when he came back into the game at with 2:31 left in the quarter. Here’s some film of the Poole takeover — this one led to a 20-point lead at the end of the period! — one that felt almost predictable, but is still notable in that the Warriors’ veterans willingly deferred to their burgeoning 22-year-old star:
4th Q:
12:00 — Poole/GPII/Thompson/OPJ/Bjelica: 101-81, Warriors lead.
9:01 — Curry/GPII/Thompson/OPJ/Bjelica: 107-89, Warriors lead.
8:56 — Curry/GPII/Thompson/Green/Bjelica: 108-89, Warriors lead.
7:34 — Curry/GPII/Thompson/Wiggins/Green: 109-89, Warriors lead.
5:53 — Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green: 114-92, Warriors lead.
4:46 — Poole/Lee/Moody/JTA/Kuminga: 119-96, Warriors lead.
3:01 — JTA/GPII/Lee/Moody/Kuminga: 119-101, Warriors lead.
The Warriors opened the fourth quarter with the Poole-led bench unit that let the Nuggets briefly take control of the game in the second quarter. That lineup managed to score 6 points in its minutes together, but they were a -2 in their minutes and after Jordan Poole lost the ball on a trapped pick-and-roll, Steve Kerr called a timeout. Shortly after that break, Steph Curry and Draymond Green checked in to try and put an early end to the game.
That symbolic end of the game did come, but not in the fashion you might expect; after missing a layup through contact against Draymond Green, Nikola Jokic turned his ire onto the nearest official and got himself ejected from the game after picking up his second technical foul (Jokic picked up a tech in the first half as well). Steph Curry hit the technical free throw to put the Warriors up by 21 points and scored another 7 in the following two and a half minutes and around the 5-minute mark, Steve Kerr emptied the bench.
POOLE WATCH BABY!!!
Early in the fourth quarter, TNT pulled up a graphic that showed Jordan Poole had scored the second-most points through his first two playoff games of any Warrior in franchise history. The only player ahead of him was Wilt Chamberlain. TNT announcer, Stan Van Gundy, pointed out the obvious — being on the same list as Wilt is quite good news. Poole finished the game with 29 points and didn’t score again in the period. Whatever. It would have been cool if Poole had crossed the 30 point-threshold if only so we could see how he compares against the other NBA players to score 30+ points in their first two playoff games, but that point total is just a number.
That number actually starts to feel quite silly and arbitrary when you consider that Poole has done to the Nuggets what Steph Curry did to most of the NBA in the 2015-16 season and barely needed to play in the fourth quarter. Poole will slow down at some point — I think??? — and his numbers should normalize below 2015-16 Steph, but in the meantime, let us just enjoy the ride. I for one, cannot wait to see how Poole performs when a game is actually competitive in the fourth quarter and defenses tighten up and nerves reveal themselves.
For good measure, let’s take a look at some more Poole highlights one last time:
And this one, again:
Jordan Poole’s stats tonight:
29 points, 8 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 block, and 2 turnovers on 10/16 FG, 5/10 3P, and 4/4 FT’s.
I enjoy your commentary.