It’s been said in boxing that styles make fights. I think the same can be said in basketball.
And this Warriors-Grizzlies series is going to be an incredible bout.
The first contest confirmed it. The Warriors won 117-116 in Memphis Sunday afternoon, but don’t take the Dubs’ early lead for granted: this series has the makings of a seven-game classic.
Because rarely do two teams match up in the way the Warriors and Grizzlies do.
And even rarer is a series starting as intense as Sunday’s Game 1.
Both teams want to push the pace. Neither team has an issue with physicality. And both squads are keen to let you and their opponent just how good they are.
Game 1 was elite sports entertainment — playoff basketball in its best form. The final 10-plus minutes of the game were played with the kind of focus and intensity typically reserved for the final seconds of contests. It was so agonizing to watch unfold, so stressful, that this series should be the first to come with a warning label on the screen. If this series goes six or seven games, it will surely create collective cardiac arrhythmia in the Bay.
Which way will the series go? It’s more than fair to lean towards the Warriors way after Sunday.
After all, the Warriors won despite losing Draymond Green in the second quarter to a questionable ejection.
They won despite Steph Curry and Klay Thompson battling foul trouble all game long.
They came back from a 13-point first-half deficit, 12 ties, and nine lead changes, including Memphis countering the Warriors with three go-ahead buckets in the final 2:19 of the contest.
These Warriors won even though Thompson, one of the greatest shooters of all time, missed both of his two free throws with 6.7 seconds renaming and the Warriors up by only one point.
Grizzlies fans will call Golden State’s Game 1 win “luck.” The Warriors prefer to call it “championship DNA.” Whatever it was, it came through, as did plenty of Dubs players who were not along for the ride during the Dubs’ dynastic run.
The Warriors received the kind of All-Star performance they needed from the ascendant Jordan Poole. After back-to-back substandard games and a tough start, Poole came through in a big way with 31 points. He could be the x-factor in this series. He was a huge reason why the Dubs won Sunday.
Gary Payton II was incredible in his first playoff start Sunday. The 6-foot-3 spitfire guard did a great job guarding Memphis superstar point guard Ja Morant, though it was Curry, of all people, who blocked Morant’s shot with 19.8 seconds remaining and Thompson who checked him when he missed his game-winning shot as the buzzer expired.
Andrew Wiggins had a huge game. The box score numbers were nice — 17 points, eight rebounds — but it was the things that can’t be quantified that made his performance a winning one Sunday. Wiggins, oftentimes a drifter on the court, apparently had Green’s heart transplanted into him at halftime.
The Warriors were being destroyed on the glass early in the contest, with Memphis grabbing offensive rebound after offensive rebound. Free possessions in a game that went down to the final one. Wiggins had two huge offensive rebounds in the final minute, all part of the Warriors somehow finishing even with Memphis in that category at the end of the game.
In a game and a series where the difference will be found in the margins, Wiggins’ hustle plays down the stretch — while he was playing center for the first time all season — could have very well been the difference.
Warriors center Kevon Looney, who didn’t start for a second-straight game as the Warriors began the contest with Green at center — more than held his own against not one but two outstanding big men for Memphis. He also had eight points every one of them coming at the rim.
Jonathan Kuminga, all of 19 years old, was called into action and changed Sunday’s game. His six rebounds proved crucial in the Warriors re-establishing control over the game and forgetting Green’s absence. Golden State
And in a game where foul trouble created rotation problems for the Warriors coaches and Green’s ejection threw the initial game plan out the window, credit must be given to guys like Damion Lee, who played for 3:29 seconds, and Juan Toscano-Anderson, who played for four seconds.
That was more than enough time for them to lose the game for the Dubs, so they deserve credit for being part of a winning effort, even if it required a few antacids.
It’s fair to wonder if the return of Green in Game 2, paired with the successes they had with him out of the game could create a new paradigm for the Warriors moving forward. Lesser teams would fold after a loss like Sunday’s
But Memphis is too talented and too headstrong for that.
The Warriors see their younger selves in the Grizzlies and it’s hard to blame them. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s hardly a stretch to see the similarities. Young, brash, underestimated, and eager to prove their worth — the Grizzlies’ only sin is that they are collectively figuring out how to win in the playoffs in real-time.
The Warriors remember what that was like, though seeing how it was seven years ago, perhaps a bit less vividly.
Curry and company can tell you that having to learn to win is hardly a disqualification, especially if a series goes deep.
Indeed, if the Warriors don’t come out with the same intensity for Game 2 they played with in the big moments — all 30-or-so minutes of them, it seemed — of Game 1, they could be providing oxygen to an incendiary team. The goal of the first two games on the road is always to split, but not against these Grizzlies. Put them down 2-0 or threaten to go the full seven games.
During the Warriors’ dynastic run, their truly epic showdowns came against threats that could be deemed almost moral. LeBron James’ Cavaliers were all about ego — one man dominating the group. James Harden and the Rockets played a style of basketball that was wholly antithetical to the Warriors’.
The Grizzlies are a new kind of threat for a new era of Dubs basketball. This is downright existential.
This is a battle of the students against the masters. And the Warriors have been teaching long enough to know one game, while exhilarating and important, is only the beginning of the battle.
