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Warriors beat Raptors in Game 2, suffer injuries to Thompson, Looney

By

Jacob Hutchinson

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© Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

It is OK to breathe. Seriously, if you haven’t taken a second to do so, I highly recommend taking a deep breath. Sunday night’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals was a weird, injury-riddled, exciting mess of a game that featured the Warriors at their most imperious and most defiant. The end result was a 109-104 win that sends the series back to Oakland tied at one game apiece.

In the five-straight years that the Golden State Warriors have been to the NBA Finals, they never had to start the series on the road, and they never lost Game 1. That changed with Thursday’s 118-109 Game 1 loss, and despite injuries to Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney, the Warriors turned the tide again on Sunday night.

Below are five takeaways from a Game 2 which shifted the series in the Warriors’ favor:

Outstanding Cousins performance helps Warriors overcome Raptors’ physical defense

The Raptors have done a tremendous job defensively, and they’ve attacked the Warriors in a physical way that the team hasn’t really seen since P.J. Tucker of the Houston Rockets in the Conference Semifinals, and Patrick Beverly of the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round. There are other players on their respective teams who guarded well, and Tucker and Beverly exemplified that style, but no team has collectively played the Warriors with a physical edge like the Raptors have.

There is a certain level of especially off-ball (as well as on-ball) contact that the Raptors have realized they can get away with. Whether it’s some extra oomph in a hip check, or leaning a shoulder in the path of a roller on a pick-and-roll, they’ve taken advantage of the fact that a lot of off-ball contact is not getting called. This is not to say the referees are doing some horrendous job, but they are allowing a lot of contact, and the Raptors have used that to their advantage.

So, how did the Warriors deal with this? They threw in the X-factor of DeMarcus Cousins, who played the most significant game of his career. It wasn’t close to the best he’s ever played, but considering the circumstances of the injuries he’s dealt with, the short amount of time he’s had to get ready, and the stakes which he was playing for, Sunday was unquestionably his basketball zenith. Think that’s not the case? Let Cousins explain what this moment meant to him:

After two quick fouls in the first four minutes of the game, there was a sort of, “of course, this again,” reaction to Cousins’ start Twitter. In one sense, it was understandable to assume that he was out of shape, unprepared, or just a poor fit within the Warriors scheme against the energy-swallowing Raptors. But Cousins proved otherwise, and eschewed the notion that he’s some ball-necessitating black hole on offense, and a minus defender.

He actually showed that all season, despite the criticism which was levied upon him, seemingly ignoring his fairly successful recovery from an Achilles tear as a 7-foot, roughly 300-pound man, and again, after a month-plus long recovery from a torn quad.

But instead, Cousins did what he’s worked this whole month, whole year, whole career for: to win at the highest level. He put up a near triple-double and was tied for the highest plus-minus (+12) on the Warriors along with Stephen Curry and Draymond Green in 28 minutes which were nowhere near to be expected from him when the game started.

In those 28 minutes, Cousins gave the Warriors 11 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks, 3 turnovers, and managed to stay in the game despite his five personal fouls. What was most impressive about his performance was his discipline, and his ability to operate in the high post like the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic did this year, creating optimal spacing for cutting wing players to look to get open through back screens and cuts to the hoop. His six assists were invaluable, and his three rebounds in the final four minutes were crucial to keeping the Warriors in control of the pace of the game.

Klay Thompson, the top-15 player, leaves injured

Last week, Klay Thompson found out he was rejected from the all three All-NBA teams. If you’ll recall, he was noticeably upset by the snub, especially when hearing that players like Kemba Walker and Bradley Beal finished above him in the voting. Thompson felt penalized by the fact that he’s sacrificed stats for success. In helping the Warriors, his numbers declined. But as The Athletic’s Anthony Slater wrote today, the Warriors need him at that level. He was not in Game 1, but he was in Game 2. Here’s what Draymond Green said about Thompson heading into Sunday’s game:

“Pissed off” Klay was outstanding for three quarters, pouring in 25 points on 10-of-17 shooting (4-of-6 from 3-pt), along with 5 rebounds and 5 assists (three of which came in the Warriors’ third-quarter avalanche). Then, Thompson pulled his hamstring, according to Steve Kerr, leaving the game with about eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. The injury was termed “hamstring tightness” by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, and Thompson said he doesn’t expect to miss Game 3, according to Chris Haynes.

Thompson, limping with an ice pack down the tunnel, did have enough energy to congratulate his teammates and heckle Drake, yelling, “See you in the Bay, Aubrey (Graham).You weren’t talking tonight, were ya? Bum ass.”

Kevon Looney also left with what Shams Charania termed a “sprained collarbone,” but which Steve Kerr said he had little information on, only saying it was, “something with his shoulder.”

Draymond stifles Siakam, dominates offensively

When Draymond Green said after the Game 1 loss that it was his job to shut down Pascal Siakam, you knew this was coming. Green, who was Siakam’s primary defender, allowed Siakam to score 32 points on 14-of-17 shooting (2-of-3 from 3-pt). He looked outmatched in every aspect, and, as has been proven time and time again, when Green concentrates on a specific goal, like limiting his disagreements with referees, the outcome is usually a positive one.

Such was the case Sunday, when Siakam tallied just 12 points on 5-of-18 shooting, along with a 0-of-3 mark from behind the arc. Green, meanwhile, looked more like the “wrecking ball” seen in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals. Although not as dominant as he was in that near-immaculate performance, Green was back as the Warriors’ engine Sunday, scoring 17 points (6-of-12, 5-of-6 from FT), grabbing 10 rebounds, 9 assists, 2 steals, 1 block and 5 turnovers.

“I wanted to set a tone on him and not let him get in rhythm early,” Green said. “In saying that I didn’t box-and-one him or chase him around the floor, like Richard Sherman does, some guys like.”

Yet, Green, despite being the primary defender on Siakam, refused to take sole credit for the defensive performance.

“That’s a complete team effort,” Green said. “I tried to do my job when I was on him and everybody else stepped in and did their job as well. I think getting back in transition was huge, but overall we threw several different bodies at him. So I can’t be up here like, yeah, I took him out of the game. That’s garbage. That was a complete team effort.”

The third-quarter “avalanche” was back

When the Warriors went into the half, it felt like they were lucky to only be trailing the Raptors 59-54. Their defensive rotations were haphazard and sloppy in the first half, and the offense wasn’t close to being in sync like it was in the Western Conference Finals. While the third quarter hasn’t always been the safe haven for the Warriors this season as it has been in past seasons, it was on Sunday night.

The Warriors embarked on a scorched-earth policy, tormenting the Raptors defense to open the half on a 18-0 run, along with two Curry free throws before the half for a 20-0 total run, the longest, according to ESPN, of any team in Finals history. They hit eight shots (2 points from Stephen Curry, 4 points from Green, 5 points from Andre Iguodala, and 7 points from Thompson) before the Raptors’ Fred VanVleet responded with a 3-pointer, but by that point, the momentum was firmly in the Warriors’ hands, and the deficit didn’t shrink to within two until the final seconds of the game.

That type of scoring bombardment failed to surprise Green, who has spoken repeatedly about the Warriors’ ability to close any gap in seconds.

It was, simply put, an avalanche of points. Later in the ESPN broadcast, just minutes after the below tweet was posted, Mike Breen referred to the Warriors’ 20-0 run in the third-quarter in the same vein, saying, “What an avalanche by Golden State.”

Andre Iguodala is timeless

You won’t find anyone who argues that Iguodala is the Warriors’ best or most important player. But just because you aren’t the best or most important player on one of the greatest teams in history (at age 35, no less) doesn’t mean you aren’t invaluable. Iguodala is simply invaluable to this team.

So often there is a debate over how important certain players on the Warriors are on the team, and what that argument belies is the fact that the team is composed of a group that relies on each other, that can succeed when other players go down, but ultimately features a series of unique, and almost perfectly complementary skillsets.

When Iguodala came up limping in Game 1, the beat writers at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto could hear the groans from the fans at the Oracle Arena viewing party. His presence is more than just his defense, passing, screening, or offensive ability; it’s a sense of calm, a veteran effervescence that signals to his teammates that, “We’re going to figure this out.”

In ESPN’s postgame coverage, Chauncey Billups said Iguodala is a, “modern-day Robert Horry,” in the most complimentary sense. Like Big Shot Rob, Iguodala has that calmness, intelligence and, “dare me to beat you,” mentality that, when all else fails, and when his team needs him most (or the other team makes the mistake of leaving him open), he puts a dagger right through your heart:

Bonus: No. 44 was in the house

In any normal situation, President Barack Obama would be the center of attention. But in the NBA Finals… well, he still was, but only for a few seconds. Obama attended Game 2 seated next to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and was shown on the Raptors’ center-court big screen, during which time he received, “MVP” chants along with a standing ovation.

Peep the “MVP” chants below:

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