The Warriors tie the series and blow out the Celtics in Game 2 of the Finals.
The Warriors win 107-88 in Gary Payton II's return, Jordan Poole stinks and then thrills, Steph Curry's third-quarter heroics, Klay Thompson's disjointed night, and Draymond Green defends and offends
In the days leading up to Game 2 of the 2022 Finals, the main players of the Warriors’ dynasty — Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green — projected calm and confidence after a demoralizing Game 1 loss at home to the Boston Celtics. The Warriors looked locked in from the jump, which kept with the pregame vibes of the team’s legendary championship core, but you’d be forgiven for not feeling intense doomer vibes when the Celtics jumped out to a 13-5 lead by the 9:36 mark of the period. The Warriors’ offense looked pedestrian for much of the first quarter, but the insertion of Gary Payton II and then later in the quarter, Otto Porter Jr., put the Warriors back in control.
Early in Payton’s first chunk of Finals minutes, he botched an open layup in transition, and I, being a perpetual doomer, tweeted my concern that his recently fractured elbow might limit his effectiveness in this series. Through one game of the Finals, my concerns don’t seem warranted. Payton II hit a three, made his only other two shot attempts of the night, and played the fifth-most minutes of any Warrior tonight. His defense was typically excellent — although he did seem to be at disadvantage size-wise against Jayson Tatum — and his cutting, passing, and defensive activity gave the Warriors new life, particularly on a night where Jordan Poole nearly played the Warriors out of the game.
You’ll read about Poole more below, but it’s hard to state just how bad he looked in his second-quarter minutes without Steph Curry. Poole fired up reckless shots, had several shots at the rim swatted, and committed an egregiously dumb offensive foul in his second-quarter minutes. Poole was so bad in that stint that he didn’t play again until there was a little more than a minute left in the third quarter and the Warriors were up by 15 points. But Poole, being outrageously confident and seemingly impervious to criticism, proceeded to assist on or score 8 points in the final stretch of the period, including the third-longest three-pointer made in the last 25 NBA Finals.
Poole’s late fourth-quarter explosion made it possible for the Warriors to sit Steph Curry for the entire fourth quarter and avoid any unnecessary stress. But one veteran of note played most of the pre-garbage time period — Klay Thompson. In a little over 30 minutes tonight, Klay Thompson made just 4 of his 19 shots and only one three-pointer. That three did come at an important point in the third period and helped spark a Warriors’ run, but that was pretty much the only good moments he had on offense tonight. With that said, Klay was as good on defense tonight as his shot was off — these three defensive possessions are among several of the excellent defensive sequences he had tonight.
Thompson’s defense helped the Warriors buckle down in the third quarter and set the stage for Steph Curry to break the Celtics’ will. Curry scored 29 points on 9/12 shooting and went 5/12 from three but it’s hard to put into words just how big his mini-run in the third quarter felt. Curry racked up only 4 assists tonight, but more importantly, he limited his turnovers to just a pair and picked up three steals on a night where he was repeatedly dragged into isolation and mostly held his own.
Save for the Celtics’ success in the opening minutes of the game, Boston didn’t really get many comfortable looks on offense. Jayson Tatum hit 6 of his 9 threes in tonight’s game, including 5/7 in the first half, but no other Celtic scored more than 15 points. Robert and Grant Williams each took and made exactly one shot a piece tonight — they were the only non-Tatum Celtics to shoot better than 33% from the field The outlier Game 1 shooting heroics of Derick White, Al Horford, and Marcus Smart turned out to be exactly that — an outlier — and they combined to shoot 6/25 from the field and 0/7 from three after going... uh... a combined 9/10 from the field and 6/7 from three IN JUST THE FOURTH QUARTER OF GAME 1.
Another thing of note — Al Horford didn’t take a single shot in tonight’s game. On the very first possession of the game, Draymond Green got up into Horford above the three-point line and forced a jump ball. Green’s message was clear — Horford would not get any easy shots tonight. It’s unlikely that Big Al will be erased from the game to a degree that extreme, but the fact that Draymond Green was able to diminish Horford that much speaks volumes to Green’s ability to turn it on in the playoffs.
Unfortunately, it seems that latter-era Draymond Green can only really turn things up a notch by also getting himself involved in a handful of minor fracas with his opponents and doing irredeemable Chris Paul-style foul baiting on offense. Green managed to “trick” the refs into calling at least two fouls on Celtics’ players by simply barreling them over or hooking his arm under them and flailing around until a whistle was blown. Simply put, this fucking sucks. Tonight, the refs were inexplicably kind or blind to Draymond’s antics. That is likely not to be the case when the Warriors go to Boston and I hope that Draymond can bring his A-Game on the road and leave all the bullshit behind at the Chase Center.
1st Q:
12:00 — Curry/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Looney: 0-0, tie game.
5:30 — Curry/GPII/Poole/Thompson/Green: 13-16, Celtics lead.
3:52 — Curry/GPII/Poole/OPJ/Looney: 15-22, Celtics lead.
The Warriors opened the game with two excellent defensive possessions involving Draymond Green. This felt like a tone-setting moment and was undone almost instantly by the Boston Celtics making their next 5 straight shots. Sound familiar? Or is that not something you want to be reminded of? I digress. The Warriors proceeded to force the Celtics into 7 straight misses but struggled to create easy shots on the other end of the court. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson both threw the ball away, Andrew Wiggins got stuffed at the rim, and Al Horford did a great job of containing drives on the perimeter. The Warriors did get four points from Andrew Wiggins and an aggressive roll to the hoop from Draymond Green and by the time Jordan Poole and Gary Payton II (!) checked in for the first time, the Warriors only trailed 13-16.
Within a few possessions, GPII got his first touch of the night on a transition play that I’ve grown to expect to end in a dunk. Instead, this happened and Jaylen Brown was called for a very generous foul.
Payton missed both of his free throws but the Warriors managed to take a lead by the end of the quarter despite the antics of Draymond Green and the defensive misadventures of Jordan Poole. Check out these two possessions below — despite Poole getting blown by with ease on both of these plays, the Celtics somehow turned the ball over and the Warriors got a three and then a floater from Steph Curry in return:
2nd Q:
12:00 — Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ/Bjelica: 31-30, Warriors lead.
11:06 — Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Bjelica: 31-30, Warriors lead.
8:11 — Curry/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Bjelica: 35-35, Warriors lead.
6:57 — Curry/GPII/Wiggins/OPJ/Green: 35-40, Warriors lead.
2:37 — Curry/GPII/Thompson/Wiggins/Green: 47-48, Celtics lead.
At the 8:11 mark of the second quarter. Steve Kerr motioned over to the bench to bring Steph Curry into the game and put a merciful end to Jordan Poole’s non-Curry minutes. Poole got blocked twice at the rim in less than four minutes and committed an unnecessary offensive foul kicking out his leg into an airborne Robert Williams on a very deep and irresponsible early shot-clock three. Within a few possessions of Curry checking in, the Warriors fell down by 5 after Nemanja Bjelica fell asleep and ceded a wide-open three to Derick White in the corner.
After a timeout, Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. checked into the game and a lineup that had played all of 6 possessions together in the regular season — Curry/GPII/Wiggins/OPJ/Green — went on an 8-0 run in two minutes, at which point Celtics’ coach, Ime Udoka, called a timeout. The Celtics managed to claw back a lead due to the shotmaking of Jayson Tatum and by the time Klay Thompson checked back into the game, Boston led by a point. The final minutes of the first half featured excellent defense by both teams as well as some chippiness between Draymond Green and Jaylen Brown that somehow (miraculously) did not end in Green getting tossed. By the end of the quarter, the Warriors led 52-50.
Let’s check out some of the notable possessions from the end of the first half. In the first sequence, we’ll look at the Warriors reflexively go into a split action set and the Celtics totally snuff it out:
A few possessions later, the Warriors dial up a pick and roll for Steph Curry with Gary Payton II as the screener and Draymond Green in the dunker spot. This possession ends in free throws for Green that were made possible by a well-timed pass on the move by GPII. You can see that below:
The third possession features Klay Thompson on defense. Klay missed all four of his three-point attempts and all but one shot in the half, but his defense — particularly off-ball — was quite focused. This shot contest was espeically nice:
3rd Q:
12:00 — Curry/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Looney: 52-50, Warriors lead.
5:46 — Curry/GPII/Wiggins/OPJ/Green: 68-56, Warriors lead.
1:54 — Curry/GPII/Wiggins/OPJ/Looney: 79-62, Warriors lead.
1:19 — Curry/Poole/Wiggins/OPJ/Looney: 79-64, Warriors lead.
In the opening minutes of the third quarter, both the Celtics and Warriors looked out of sorts and rushed. Andrew Wiggins blew another shot near the hoop, Klay Thompson smoked a layup, and on one instance where Wiggins crashed the boards hard for an offensive rebound, Robert Williams erased his shot with ease. Less than a minute later, Klay Thompson his first three of the night and put the Warriors up by 7. A few possessions later, Thompson did this while defending Al Horford in the post:
With the crowd at Chase Center properly engaged, the Warriors padded their lead as high as 12 points after a technical foul was charged to Ime Udoka. The Warriors smelled blood at this point but rather than methodically try to break their opponent, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson went for risky kill shots on back-to-back-to-back possessions. These reckless possessions gave the Celtics a chance to get back in the game, but stout interior defense and rebounding from Kevon Looney helped the Warriors stave off a potential Boston run. Steve Kerr, sensing the Warriors were getting a little out of control, called a timeout at the 5:46 mark of the quarter to bring in Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr.
You’ll notice that Jordan Poole was not one of those first subs and deservedly so. Without Poole, the Warriors pushed their lead up to 17 points as Steph Curry hit a pair of threes off of high pick-and-rolls. Jordan Poole finally checked into the game at the 1:19 mark. On his very first possession of the quarter, Poole drove to the hoop and set Kevon Looney up for an easy layup. Poole followed up that up with two absolutely bonkers decisions that came up gold to give the Warriors an 87-64 lead going into the fourth quarter:
4th Q:
12:00 — Poole/GPII/Thompson/Green/Bjelica: 87-64, Warriors lead.
6:27 — Poole/GPII/Moody/Thompson/Looney: 95-72, Warriors lead.
3:35 — Poole/GPII/Moody/JTA/Kuminga: 102-78, Warriors lead.
Less than two minutes into the fourth quarter, Ime Udoka called a timeout after the Warriors opened up the period on a 9-0 scoring run. Udoka subbed out all but one of his key players in what seemed like a show of anger. The Warriors proceeded to call their own timeout after back-to-back turnovers by Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole, who followed up his turnover with an ugly, bricked layup in transition against Daniel Theis. When Moses Moody checked into the game at the 6:27 mark of the period, the Warriors led by 23 points, and Klay Thomspon was still in the game. This moment was, in effect, one of the last that the Celtics had to stage a comeback. After Thompson made a pair of free throws, the Celtics missed a three and the Warriors committed an unnecessary turnover on the very next possession. With the lead down to 22 points, Steve Kerr called another timeout.
Klay Thompson did not check out of the game at that point and proceeded to miss another mid-range jumper as he tried to get his rhythm back, but the game did eventually give way to mostly unstressful garbage time when Damion Lee, Juan Toscnao-Anderson, and Jonathan Kuminga checked into the game with 3:35 left and the Warriors up by 24.
Thank you! Lots of off-season content coming soon.
Hoping to see more from you as we transition from an aging title team into the next iteration... good breakdowns are hard to find