Lots of things can be said about tonight's game, but I'll just point out this:
GSW top 3 (Durant / Curry / Thompson) = 78 points
BOS top 3 (Irving / Horford / Tatum) = 74 points
Final margin (115- 111) = 4 points
Boston is right there with GSW
I’ll also point this out:
Hayward -8
Brown -8
Rozier -4
Baynes -11
Looney +13
Iguodala +7
Livingston +2
McKinnie +11
Our starters can hold their own against GSW but our bench got killed tonight AT HOME!
The bench in the first half had Durant go off for 10 straight Warrior points in just a couple minutes before the end of the 1st. That was with Brown playing some tough defense on Durant. Then to start the 2nd quarter Curry went off for 12 straight with 4 straight 3's.
The numbers say the bench was pretty bad but the context and other numbers show you the bench scored only one point less than the GS bench and had most of their bad +/- happen while 2 off the best shooters of all-time got red hot against them.
Bench should have helped win the game but they really aren't the reason they lost the game.
This was a 2 point game with 10 seconds left. When the starters returned for Boston at the 6 minute mark of the 4th it was a 1 point game 99-98. So no bench player did anything to lose the game in the final 6 minutes. Morris, a starter had a wide open three with 10 seconds left to go up by 1 but missed. Had to foul Green. He missed both and the bounce on the second miss was a bad one. Warriors win.
This game has convinced me that once everyone is playing their best in the playoffs, even beating the Warriors is very possible.
The numbers say the bench was bad because they were bad. Even CBS said in the ESPN interview between quarters that the offense stalled. Iirc, “they’ll go on their runs and what you need to do is respond.” The bench unit didn’t.
Our starters played amazing (i think they outplayed GSW starters even) and some of those Morris misses, I’d take because they were wide open. Down the stretch, GSW won the game and that Draymond miss was a lucky bounce that didn’t go our way. But Kyrie and co. had to “claw back” from 8-9 point deficits which I know doesn’t sound like much but against elite teams (and in tight games with so many lead changes), an 8 point differential matters.
Sure, our bench played poorly, but GSW bench didnt either. It just look that way but it was Durant(and Curry) who was the sole reason of that +/-
For us it was Tatum with the bench and he barely shot the ball during that time. What's the difference there is that the Warriors have 2 superstars they could stagger with the bench while we only have 1.