© Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
The beauty of a seven-game series is that you don’t get lucky when you emerge with a series win.
Seven games evaluate depth, home/road play, allows for bad luck, poor calls, players to get hot and cold, coaching adjustments, and eventually mental toughness. Anything fewer than seven games introduces luck, randomness, small sample size, and is really laughable in deciding post-season winners (hello, baseball).
But to win four of seven games from a team proves a level of superiority that is very rare when two quality teams collide. And that’s just what the Warriors accomplished.
They owned Game 1, Game 3, Game 6, and were solid enough to win Game 7. Game 4 should have been a Warrior win until an epic collapse in the fourth quarter that put the Warriors hopes of defending their title in jeopardy. That horrific memory did not ultimately cost this team but hopefully will provide a lesson learned: you usually can not give away a game (particularly a home game) in a seven-game series. The Warriors did and escaped.
In the end, for all the pretty Warriors shooting and the best trio of scorers the game has ever seen, it came down to quality defense for the Warriors against Houston. Five straight games under 100 points for the Rockets. (That happened for Houston only eight times all year.) Five straight games of Houston shooting 40 percent or less from the field. This from the second-best offensive team in the game. That is some incredibly consistent defensive effort. In the end, that IS the Warriors.
Seven games indicate a close series, but the Warriors are a far more complete team than Houston. Take away the James Harden flailing, the Eric Gordon push-offs, and the consistent Chris Paul fouling, and the Rockets rely on free throws to beat teams. Credit goes to PJ Tucker, Clint Capela, and Trevor Ariza for some really hard-fought basketball. They don’t rely on the gimmicks and odd-looking basketball that the “stars” make a staple of their game on that team.
Houston has really improved on defense and that is to its credit. The Rockets frustrated the Warriors and forced them into uncharacteristic sloppiness we have not seen from the defending champs. The Rockets earned respect for that relentless energy and commitment.
Here are seven things in honor of the series being completed, and a prediction for the next one:
- Memo to Jordan Bell and Kevon Looney: Harden goes LEFT.
- Klay Thompson can’t pick up those three fouls in a critical game again. One basket is not worth him missing huge minutes. The same goes for Stephen Curry missing the final 5 minutes of the first half of Game 4.
- Nick Young can be very frustrating, but he is such a good guy you have to pull for him.
- To Golden State’s large men: welcome back. You will be playing against Cleveland.
- Don’t ever forget how clutch, how tough, and how important Curry is to the Warriors. Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Steve Kerr, Joe Lacob, and Bob Myers are all immensely important to the Warriors. But Curry is the magic.
- Iguodala’s availability for the Finals will determine the length of the series.
- Harden is the MVP? LeBron James will remind the world that is completely untrue.
Warriors/Cavaliers for the fourth time. We’ve seen this movie before, except the Kyrie Irving character has been removed from the script. The Warriors are the better team. And the better team ALWAYS wins a seven-game series…