They started the series 0-2, managed to tie it, and did the hardest thing, winning a fifth game in Sacramento. And when the Warriors had everything to face to close the series at home, the Kings passed them over. Mike Brown’s teamled by De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk, he left Golden State at 99 points and took the game by 19 points difference. Which means there will be a Game 7 in the first round of the playoffs. One, only one, but in the best possible series. And along the way they will try to avoid breaking an immaculate streak.
When Steve Kerr took the reins of the Golden State bench in 2015, they won their first ring. Since then, eight seasons have passed, the Warriors they have yet to lose a playoff series in the Western conference. All the losses, in 2016 and 2019, came in the finals. In these six years, with the parenthesis of 2020 and 2021 where they did not qualify for the postseason, they have faced ten different teams: they have beaten them all. They’ve swept a series more times, five, than they’ve been forced into a Game 7. At least until the Kings have reached the playoffs.
Because for the fourth time in their recent history, Steve Kerr’s Golden State Warriors will play a seventh game to decide the winner of a playoff. The first two came in 2016 and the third and last, in 2018. And although they are the team with the most playoff games in the last eight (132), Since Kerr’s arrival on the bench, there are four teams with more seventh games played and up to seven with the same number as Golden State. If it is often said that the playoffs and the regular season are two different sports, a seventh and final one is even worse. A world of their own, a space with no option to fail, made for the great heroes of history.
In their first time together in a seventh, the Warriors beat Oklahoma in the 2016 conference finals.. After a devastating sixth game, they beat the team of Kevin Durant y Russell Westbrook scoring just 96 points. Steph Curry (36 points, seven triples) saved the team and got the pass to the second consecutive finals, where he expected LeBron. And where they played their second seventh game, although this time they lost. It was also at home, at the old Oracle Arena in Oakland, in a game that has been recorded in the collective subconscious of the NBA. LeBron’s block, Kyrie’s triple and the first finals where a 1-3 was traced.
The third and last came two years later, in 2018. It was the first of this group away from home, with the Warriors visiting Houston in the West finals. A game that went down in history for the 27 consecutive misses from the Houston Rockets triple, an NBA record. Although theoretically it was not the first seventh of these Warriors: in 2014, still with Mark Jackson as head coach and already with the starting big-3, they faced the Clippers in the first round. Los Angeles made the home court count in the decisive game with four players over 20 points.
On Sunday both wars are played at the same time. The Warriors will look to keep their Western conference winning streak alive as they attempt to win their third Game 7 together. And ahead, the team with the least experience in the playoffs. One that has gotten by now something that only LeBron James, Kevin Durant and James Harden have achieved: lead the Warriors to seventh.
2023-04-29 06:22:07
#Curry #Kerrs #Warriors #play #legacy #seventh #game #history #Relief
