We've SWEPT the 3-1 jokes away, NOW WE SMELL LIKE CHAMPAGNE AGAIN(OFFICIAL WARRIORS 18-19 THREAD)
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G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
I want us to break the Rocketettes.
I think we get it done in 6, but I won't be surprised if we lose the 1st game... But this will be a battle for sure.. it should be fun...
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
Once we take em out people can stop talking about them being contenders and having excuses for why they lost last season.
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
Roland Coltrane
Superstar
A conversation with Kevin Durant on his mega series and the state of the Warriors
By Anthony Slater Apr 27, 201959
LOS ANGELES — This is how Kevin Durant views the first two games of this now extinguished Clippers series.
In the opener, he entered with the same measured approach that had worked fine in the final month of the regular season. Facing an overloaded scheme, he passed out of double teams, was selective about his 16 shots, scored 23 points and added three blocks in an attentive defensive night.
The formula worked. The Warriors won easily. There was no need to throttle up the aggression. The Clippers appeared overwhelmed. Cruise mode was succeeding.
So he entered Game 2 the same way. It was working again. No one on the Warriors was binge shooting. The attempts were spread, all under 10 in the middle of the third quarter. Durant was 4 of 5. His team was up 31 points.
Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe the entire team did. But the Clippers blitzed them, putting together a frantic, historic comeback. Steph Curry’s foul trouble sparked the match, Klay Thompson’s shooting slump deepened, Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell went Stockton-Malone and, yes, Durant was unable to crank it from first gear to fifth at the snap of a finger.
Even when he ticked up the aggression, it went poorly. He committed four offensive fouls in the second half, the most controversial of those a bang-bang charge on a driving transition layup. Had the referee ruled block, Durant would’ve been awarded a crucial and-1 and the Warriors likely would have had a 2-0 series lead.
Instead, the referee called charge and Durant soon fouled out, forcing him to watch the completion of an epic collapse. He figured the blowback was coming — at Curry for his game-changing reaches, at Thompson for his critical missed 3s, at Steve Kerr for his lack of adjustments and at him for a sloppy, nine-turnover low-energy night.
Durant instead found the sports world pinning the 31-point collapse mostly on him, using his eight shot attempts as the latest sign of an inevitable summer departure and — the leading narrative ticking him off the most — that Patrick Beverley was locking him up.
Durant is now at his locker at Staples Center late on Friday night. He’s just dropped 50 points to eliminate the Clippers with a 129-110 win in Game 6. He lounges back in his seat for a post-series retrospective interview with The Athletic. He takes his mind back to the day after Game 2.
“Shoot,” Durant says. “Everybody was, everybody was … from my teammates, my coaches, fans, media. shyt, even some friends who don’t even watch basketball: ‘Don’t let that little guy get into your head. Play your game.‘”
Durant shook his head.
“Just shut up,” he says. “We were up 30 points that game and I only had eight shots. Then everybody came down on me for that. I didn’t change anything up (after that). I just think my teammates and coaches wanted to see something. So they kept passing me the ball.”
It doesn’t take a hoops genius to identify two different versions of Durant in this series. In those first two games, he played like, let’s say, a Pascal Siakam — a long, helpful defender and secondary scorer, impactful but not overwhelming.
But in the four games after — in which Durant went for 38, 33, 45 and 50 points, pairing extreme aggression with lethal efficiency, Slim Reaping the Clippers into their offseason — that was a whole different player. That was a dude with a very strong claim as the best player in the world.
So what happened? And this time, don’t just tell us that Kerr called a couple more plays. It was deeper than that. A mental adjustment. Did all the outside noise — even the poking from your coach — piss you off enough to jolt you into fifth gear?
“I wasn’t pissed off at all,” he said. “I would’ve got pissed off a couple years ago, for sure, and probably wouldn’t have came out like that. I just felt like everybody didn’t know what they were talking about.”
Durant returns to the Beverley narrative.
“It was just the, ‘Oh, don’t let him get in your head,'” Durant said. “That’s the thing with me now, the criticism of me now. Because people can’t really criticize the basketball. So the criticism is that he was getting in my head.”
He then makes an admission, laughing a little while doing so because he knows it sounds a little contradictory.
“So, you know, I actually was getting into my head because of people saying that,” he said. “You know? Stop talking to me about somebody getting in my head because it didn’t happen.”
Wherever the outside rhetoric drove Durant’s brain, the result has worked perfectly for the Warriors. He entered Game 3 with ferocious intentions, hitting five jumpers in the opening minutes — “Kill mode,” Draymond Green called it — and he kept that same energy for four straight games.
Did he come out with a point to prove? And, if so, does he feel like it was proven?
“Uhh, I don’t really have those thoughts when I come into this game,” Durant said. “If you haven’t watched me in 12 years, I feel sorry for you. Because you’ve missed some good performances over this time. I don’t have to prove nothing. If I don’t play well one night, just come back the next.”
But how about in that locker room? How about for those teammates, who’ve been engulfed in the tiring speculation all season, are curious about his future intentions and just witnessed him take over a series that, surprisingly, they very much needed him to take over? Did this historic scoring binge prove anything to them?
“Not really. I think y’all just fukked with me,” Durant said. “Y’all were just picking at me. Not my teammates. Just from the outside. People were just picking at me, nitpicking everything I did.
“So my coach was like ‘Oh, since they want to talk and everybody want to say this and that …’ he started calling more plays for me. Empowering me to be more and more aggressive running the offense. Then I just played my game. I wasn’t trying to show nobody up, prove anything to anyone.”
So what about that idea that he already has one foot out the door?
“How’s it look to you?” Durant said. “How’s it been looking all season? I played 78 games, right? I don’t even have to tell you my numbers. You know them.”
Marcus Thompson is nearby. He tosses out a playful jab: “But I seen you by the stanchion,” he tells Durant, in reference to Durant’s in-game island away from the timeout huddle, giving off a vibe to some that he was checked out.
“It’s just how it looks,” Durant said. “The optics. People don’t like how I am, don’t like how I approach shyt. Don’t like how I don’t smile. How I just don’t have this exuberant spirit, how I don’t make them feel good about coming to a game. But that ain’t my job. My job is to be locked in on me, be focused on me.”
This is an ideal time for Durant to be in kill mode. The Rockets await. To many, this will be the Warriors’ toughest test of the postseason. To succeed in this high-profile clash, the Warriors must be connected in tough times. Durant will be at the center of any storm. So what’s his assessment on the current state of his locker room?
“Everything we do is high-profile,” Durant said. “And I don’t believe anything was ever wrong with our locker room. No offense to you two guys, but every time your (media) colleagues walk in here, they bring that toxic energy in here and they start writing about that energy because it’s how they feel.
“But when you’re actually in this locker room, there’s nothing going on in here. We just be chilling. There’s a lot of speculation about me, about my attitude, about where I’m playing next season that a lot of these dudes in here (points around at random media members) are trying to distract us with and then want to blame it on me because it’s easy to blame it on me. I understand that. We understand that. So for us, we just made it about basketball.”
(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein / Getty Images)
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Anthony Slater is a senior writer covering the Warriors for The Athletic Bay Area. Previously, he covered the team for the Bay Area News Group for one season and also spent three seasons covering the Thunder for The Oklahoman. Follow Anthony on Twitter @anthonyVslater.
Roland Coltrane
Superstar
Thompson: Stephen Curry unplugged and unbothered as Kevin Durant emerges as the Warriors’ leading star
By Marcus Thompson II 1h ago10
LOS ANGELES — The series was over, finally, and Stephen Curry sat on the floor in front of his locker at Staples Center late Friday night. His black hat was pulled low enough so the shadow would cover his eyes. His black Under Armour sweater rose up as he slumped against the wall, both legs enveloped in a compression chamber. He was scrolling through his phone when his dad walked up.
Dell Curry reached for the remaining Chick-fil-A sandwich next to his son.
“You going to finish this?” Dell asked, pointing to the sandwich. He grabbed it, then let it go. But the son insisted.
“Take it,” Curry said. “I’ve had one. I probably won’t eat the other one.”
Dell asked if he was sure, once, then the sandwich was his. And Curry smiled. One of his favorite indulgences was now gone. In his mind, it went to good use. He then returned to our conversation.
“Is the narrative basically, ‘Why is it not like it was three years ago?’ Is that the gist of it?” Curry asked.
Then he added his own answer.
“The game is entirely different,” Curry said, lifting up his head to remove the shadow from his eyes. “People defend us differently. You’re going to adjust with it or you’re going to fight it and the ego is going to chip in and say, ‘you need to get your 25 shots no matter what.’ I have the same intent and focus and energy — but the way it looks, the way it looks on the stat sheet, all that stuff is entirely different.”
Curry is feeling good. Even though his sprained right ankle, which was tightly wrapped under his black socks, brings some uncertainty into Game 1 on Sunday against the Houston Rockets in the second round. And although he took just 14 shots, Friday night’s 129-110 win over the Clippers — ending the first-round series in six games — was exactly what he wanted to see. It was the kind of performance that justifies the Warriors’ confidence.
And that the star of the show wasn’t him didn’t matter.
It was Kevin Durant’s night, just like it had been for three games leading into the series-ender. The 50-point performance in Game 6 completed a stretch in which Durant averaged 41.5 points, a stretch that began when the talk was how Clippers point guard Patrick Beverley shut the Warriors down for stretches in Game 2. But for Curry, it felt like Warriors basketball. And the 31-year-old, who has two MVPs and three championship rings, finds satisfaction in that. Pleasure in it.
He told Durant in the Hamptons back in July 2016 that he didn’t care about whose team it was, who got the most shots or who sold the most shoes. And three years later, he still doesn’t care. That’s all a Chick-fil-A sandwich to him — just as valuable in the hands of others if it means the family eats.
The Warriors have never looked more like Durant’s team, in the way the NBA landscape measures this stuff, and Curry seems to never have cared less. That’s clear in his defensive tone when talking about the perceived Warriors struggles and the panic from them being pushed to six games by the Clippers.
“It’s one game,” Curry said, defiantly. “It’s the first round of the playoffs. What is everybody panicking about? It’s one game. It just that it never happens to us in our five-year run where the first round goes beyond five. But it’s one game.”
The enthusiasm is obvious as his eyes beamed excitedly when he talked about his performance, even though his numbers have stopped jumping off the page like his 38 points did in Game 1. The world saw Durant looking like the best player in the world. What Curry saw was a dynamic duo clicking like they should.
“We feed off each other that way,” Curry said of him and Durant. “We highlight each other’s strengths. His strength is he can get a bucket any time he wants to, but we can also take some pressure off of him. But when he’s dominant like that, and then every two or three possessions I can come off a pick-and-roll and either I’m scoring or getting into the lane or somebody is getting a — WE HAD SEVEN LOBS.”
Curry has always been an optimist. He has always tried to bend reality to his positivity. But the older, wiser Curry is laced with more realism than ever before. His declarations don’t sound as Polyanna-ish as they used to, when his boyish looks made his hope sound more like fantasy. But now he’s a grizzled veteran, with the beard and hairline and jawline to prove it. His confidence sounds more sensible next to the hysteria of dynasty hype.
His coolness has a way of relaxing the angst around him.
Talking to Curry, it’s hard not to walk away thinking everything will be all right.
It’s not that he is always calm, always unbothered. It’s that his wisdom gleaned from leading a franchise from the pits has given him the most accurate gauge of where they are. And maybe that’s his greatest contribution in this bid for a third straight championship. Maybe it’s not the shooting, the penetrating, the gravity. Maybe it’s his steadiness, the anchored way he moves during the Warriors’ chaos. Maybe it’s as the bellwether for the team. Not for us on the outside but for them on the inside.
After the Game 5 loss, Curry was visibly upset. When the media walked into the locker room, he was going to town on the exercise bike, steely-eyed, seemingly trying to run away from frustration. It wasn’t because they lost. It was because they didn’t live up to their standard and he didn’t live up to his. No one in there who saw that scene could get the impression that it was all good.
So it’s no surprise that in the next game the Warriors went small, starting Shaun Livingston, and ran more pick-and-rolls than they had run since the All-Star break. The ball was back in Curry’s hands more. That was the difference between Durant getting 44 and the Warriors losing, and Durant getting 50 and the Warriors looking like a juggernaut.
Curry took the first shot of the game, his missed 3-pointer gobbled up by Draymond Green for a putback. A minute later, he drove against the Clippers’ pressure, getting all the way to the rim, his missed layup leading to another offensive rebound and putback.
“I was way more aggressive,” Curry said. “We can’t be a team that just sits and watches (Durant). Even if he gets 50. We can’t be that team that just force feeds him. Because then over 48 (minutes) everybody will be needed. The fact that Andre (Iguodala) got four lobs, (Kevon) Looney got a couple, Draymond’s involved and playmaking, Klay (Thompson) had a rough one but defensively he was locked in, and this dude goes for 50. He ain’t gonna go for 50 every time, but the way we played was perfect.”
The Warriors are their own greatest foe. If Game 6 was the revelation of how they need to play, what offense they need to run and the level of engagement and energy required, then Curry’s greatest task is working toward that end. If it means a transition of control in their offense, from Curry to Durant, that bothers Curry much less than his diehard fans.
The symbiosis in Game 6 — of Curry and Durant, of Steve Kerr and his stars — is the blueprint for another championship. It will be a requirement for the Warriors to get past Houston in the next round.
Durant will need to be every bit as dominant against the Rockets. He is the Warriors’ decisive advantage. Which means Curry will be in a secondary role, which for him is not secondary, just a new version of primary.
And, just maybe, this is a glimpse into the future, how the new iteration of the Warriors would look should Durant decide to stay. Durant as the planet and Curry its primary moon. That doesn’t lessen Curry’s role. It expands his value and importance.
For years, he carried the weight of having to be the epicenter of the offense. That comes with its own type of pressure, but it came with great perks. It came with recognition, with status.
Now, there is the same amount of pressure as he adjusts to a new existence, one that requires him to do what it takes to make this work even if it means his reward is criticism instead of praise.
But it takes maturity to recognize the need to adjust and to lean in. It takes perspective to see past the social media veneer of supremacy, to step over today’s athlete’s insatiable appetite for love.
Curry is older now, his life more textured, his vision clearer, because of contacts and because of experience. So he knows the Warriors must evolve, and he must lead the way. Which means finding just as much fulfillment in sharing his Chick-fil-A as devouring it himself.
“I want more shots, yeah,” Curry confessed. “But my aggressiveness is not in search of that. It’s just trying to make plays. You can tell by our body language it’s a different effect out there. KD had it going all night. The times he didn’t have the ball in his hands, we were still getting good shots. Even if it was me or Draymond or Andre or Klay. Whoever it was. That’s when we’re at our best.
“Look around the league, everybody is nitpicking everybody,” he continued. “It don’t matter. As long as I’m still playing basketball, it don’t matter. The last two runs with K, there’s been an amazing balance. Everybody in the locker room is highlighting each other’s strengths. When we don’t do that is when we get beat. It’s about balance.”
(Photo: Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty Images)
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Marcus Thompson II is a lead columnist at The Athletic Bay Area. He is a prominent voice in the local sports scene after 18 years with Bay Area News Group, including 10 seasons covering the Warriors and four as a columnist. Marcus is also the author of the best-selling biography "GOLDEN: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry." Follow Marcus on Twitter @thompsonscribe.
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
Good shyt. Rep pending soon as I can.
Roland Coltrane
Superstar
turnovers and stupid fukking fouls, ALREADY 
Roland Coltrane
Superstar
DRAYMOND fukkING STOP 