SAN FRANCISCO — The thing about being a three-time champion, playing in your sixth NBA Finals, with three future Hall of Famers, is that everything about the moment feels familiar, expected, comfortable.
It’s your advantage on this stage. Until it isn’t. Until the opponent with zero championships and zero Finals and a bunch of young, still-developing stars blitz you for 10 straight minutes on your home court. And then, all that familiarity and experience feel like a tattered, moth-riddled security blanket.
Sure, the Warriors have been down in playoff series before, and knocked off-kilter in the Finals before. But not often. And never like this.
The Celtics—younger, stronger, spryer, and fueled by a three-point barrage that left even Stephen Curry awestruck—thoroughly dominated the fourth quarter here Thursday night, seizing a 120–108 win to open the Finals and putting the Warriors in the rarest of situations: facing an 0–1 deficit in a series.
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“It’s not ideal,” Curry said, with the nonchalance of a decorated veteran who has, quite literally, seen it all before, “but I believe in who we are and how we deal with adversity, how we responded all year, how we’ve responded in the playoffs after a loss.”
To a man—and especially among the core that won those championships not long ago—the Warriors treated this stunning defeat as an inconvenience, not a crisis of any sort.
“It’s first to four [wins], not first to one,” Klay Thompson said flatly, “and we all have been through situations like this.”
True enough. To win their first title in 2015, the Warriors had to overcome a 2–1 Finals deficit (and the loss of home court advantage) against the Cavaliers. To make the Finals the next year, they had to overcome a 3–1 deficit in the Western Conference finals against the Thunder.
But the Warriors have lost Game 1 of a playoff series only twice in Steve Kerr’s eight-year run as head coach: in that aforementioned series against the Thunder (which they won), and in the 2019 Finals against the Raptors (which they lost).
This is different, and probably far more uncomfortable than Golden State would readily admit. Especially given how it happened. They held a 12-point lead to open the fourth quarter. It was gone within 7 minutes, erased by a flurry of Warriors turnovers and Jaylen Brown threes. And the avalanche never abated. Al Horford hit a pair of threes. Marcus Smart hit a pair of threes. Derrick White and Payton Pritchard combined for three more.
All told, the Celtics went 9-for-12 from the arc in the final period, outscoring the Warriors by a preposterous 40–16 margin—the most lopsided quarter in Finals history—leaving the crowd shell-shocked and leaving the Warriors, well, sorta numb.
By the final minutes, the only energy left in the building was the gaggle of Boston fans chanting, “Let’s go, Celtics!”
“It’s fine,” said Draymond Green, the Warriors’ defensive conscience and emotional barometer. “You get a chance to do something else, do it in a different way, embrace the challenge. We’ve always embraced challenges. It’s no different. We’ll embrace this one. So no, it’s not a hit to the confidence at all. Not one bit.”
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If anything, Golden State seemed to view Boston’s offensive explosion and its spectacular final push as, well, a bit of an anomaly. Horford, who averaged 1.3 threes per game this season, hit six (on eight attempts). Smart, a career 33% shooter on threes, went 4-for-7. And midseason pickup Derrick White, who shot 31% on threes this season, went 5-for-8. All told, the Celtics went 21-for-41 at the arc, which—even accounting for the Warriors’ defensive lapses—struck them as an unsustainable rate.
“They hit 21 threes,” Green said, “and Marcus Smart and Al Horford and Derrick White combined for 15 of them. The guys are good, but …” Green kept pausing, cocking his head to the left and raising his palms, as if to say, without saying it, but there’s no way they can do that again. “So we’ll be fine,” he said.
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The thing is, this Celtics team is—by far—the most talented and the most complete team the Warriors have faced this postseason. They’re stronger defensively than the Mavericks and Grizzlies were. They have more offensive options and better shooters, too. And they won this game despite getting just 12 points (on 3-for-17 shooting) from franchise star Jayson Tatum.
After weathering a 21-point explosion from Curry in the first quarter, the Celtics held him to just 13 points over the final three quarters (four in the fourth). Thompson produced just 15 points on 14 shots. Green went 2-for-12 from the field. Only Andrew Wiggins (20 points), himself a newcomer to this stage, gave Curry consistent support.
So the Warriors can comfort themselves with their vast experience and their history of resilience and all those banners hanging above the Chase Center court. They can feel secure in their ability to take a game in Boston—which is now necessary—having won at least one road game in every playoff series in the Kerr era.
They’ve also never been down 0–2 in a series, and this one probably won’t be the first. But they have some things to figure out before taking the court for Game 2 here Sunday.
“It’s a different feeling,” Kerr said, conceding that Game 2 would bring out a “sense of desperation,” which is not a word we’ve often associated with these Warriors. “But we’ve been in this position before, and we’ve won series where we’ve lost the first game. We’ve won a road game, at least one road game, in I don’t know how many consecutive series.”
Experience, the Warriors insist, is still on their side. For now, at least.
