All year long, the Warriors have been masters of their home court. After back-to-back wins on the road for the first time this season, Golden State opened a four-game home slate that will cut the rest of the season in half.
Once again, they faced a compelling opponent without a key member of their backcourt. On Wednesday, they beat a Kyrie Irving-less Mavericks team (who are now in danger of missing the play-in). On Friday, it was the far more imposing Philadelphia 76ers, who were without James Harden.
Despite an outstanding Joel Embiid performance, the Warriors netted a third-straight win to get their 30th home victory this season with a 120-112 victory.
The quick-turnaround Warriors sparked by Jordan Poole
Do you remember the peak dynasty days when the Warriors would let teams hang around a little longer than they should have? They’d play with their food, then, usually in the third quarter, demolish them in a flurry.
It’s not nearly that easy now. They don’t have as many reliable shooters, and so much rests upon Steph Curry’s shoulders.
But lately, they’ve shown a capacity to close deficits rapidly.
When Jordan Poole’s fearlessness manifests more positively than his recklessness, those bursts are far easier to come by.
While they’ll often come just before or just after moments of mind-bogglingly low basketball IQ, Poole has been offering far more good than bad. Against Philadelphia, he was outstanding.
At the start of the fourth quarter, Golden State trailed by 11. In a roughly three-minute stretch, they cut that deficit to a couple with a 12-3 run that featured 10-straight points from Poole.
That stretch was snapped when Embiid re-entered the game and immediately got himself to the line twice, one of which was a 3-point play.
But the Warriors were able to counter some of the Sixers’ blows, largely delivered by the MVP candidate, because Poole continued to find space and sprint down the floor like a kid who just slammed a pack of Gushers at recess.
He had 33 points (10-of-19, 6-of-11 from 3-pt), 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 turnovers. He came into the game shooting 32.3 percent from 3 this season.
When Poole plays like this, it gives the Warriors a constant path to flip the script. And by “plays like this,” we’re talking about driving the lane, pushing the pace, and looking for open shooters.
He can struggle mightily when he leans on his 3-point shot, but there are nights like these when his irrational confidence turns bad shots into good ones. And more often than not, that confidence is built up by him scoring in the paint.
Poole was one of the main reasons the Warriors won this game. His ability to put Philadelphia on the back foot and press the rim loomed massive in this one.
He is ever-chaotic, but if he can ever live on the positive end of that chaos spectrum instead of the negative end, it’s a harrowing proposition for opponents.
(Oh, and he also played great defense on a handful of possessions, including one of the final possessions of the game. That’s pretty rare — he also had a maddeningly bad defensive decision earlier — but on a night like this, it’s worth mentioning.)
Joel Embiid making his MVP case
It’s not hard to understand why Joel Embiid has jumped ahead of Nikola Jokic in the MVP odds.
There’s the narrative of Jokic perhaps being undeserving of third-straight MVP due to the Nuggets’ playoff failures, and it’s coincided with Denver wilting while Philadelphia is perhaps the hottest team in the league.
The 76ers entered Friday having won 9 of their last 10, with their only loss in overtime to the Chicago Bulls.
That has overwhelmingly been a result of Embiid’s magnificence. He had nonsensical night on Friday, finishing with 46 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists, a couple steals, a block and 3 turnovers. He was a silly 19-of-22 from the line.
From an opposing perspective, he is maddening to watch. It just seems like every possession he doesn’t get to the line, he’s swinging the ball out of a double team to a wide open shooter.
The Warriors didn’t have many answers for him, let alone height to match up — not that that’s a perfect recipe for stopping him.
Any time he didn’t take a shot, it was a win for the Warriors.
His teammates were woeful from 3, going 8-of-29 (27.6 percent) from range, and while he got some first half scoring help from the likes of Tyrese Maxey (21 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists) and Tobias Harris (18 first half points (8-of-10), 5 rebounds), Maxey was seriously inefficient in the second and Harris had 5 points in the second half.
It’s easy to say Embiid ran out of gas at the end, and there was a definite fatigue factor that seemed to prevent him from getting lift on some opportunities that would normally be fadeaways for him. But Golden State also started selling out almost entirely on him and his teammates didn’t have much to offer at the end.
Draymond remains proactive on offense, gets front court help
As the season creeps ever closer towards the playoffs, Draymond Green starts to round into his postseason self. He pointed to that reality in his postgame presser.
He is, as ever, excellent on dribble handoffs and setting perhaps the most effective screens in the league. His defensive positioning remains stellar.
But his awareness, to understand that the Warriors have needed him to score, or at least position himself as someone who will look at the hoop, has been impressive.
While he was probably a little too aggressive behind the arc (0-of-4 on 3s after briefly eclipsing Jordan Poole’s season 3-point shooting percentage on Wednesday), he drove and finished at the rim a few times. You can feel the weight of those unexpected points on every possession.
He had 10 points, 7 rebounds, 10 assists, a steal and 5 turnovers while wreaking defensive havoc that shut the 76ers down in the final minutes of the game.
It was a seriously difficult proposition against Joel Embiid.
Green, though excellent defensively, needed help from just about everyone.
Kevon Looney, who had to bear the brunt of Embiid’s constant bullying, was great at facilitating, finishing with 6 points, 10 rebounds and 7 assists. He continues to lead the league in offensive boards and had 3 against Philadelphia.
JaMychal Green also had a quietly impressive night, with 12 points (2-of-3 from 3-pt), 6 rebounds and a steal.
Even Moses Moody had a key 3 off the bench and a couple nice defensive possessions.
This is all without mentioning Steph Curry (29 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 turnovers) and Klay Thompson (21 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 turnovers) who both hit monumental shots and were their usually stellar selves.
The only one who was not impressive was Jonathan Kuminga, who took too many 3s (1-of-5), and was a little too eager defensively, though he had some nice one-on-one defensive matchups.
With Poole playing as well as he did and a combined effort to pressure everyone not named Joel Embiid to beat them, Golden State just offered too much for a James Harden-less Philadelphia.
