Neither team playing great tonight. Celtics need a run, and they need it quickly.
That’s all she wrote. The Warriors have their fourth championship of the Curry era, and Curry almost certainly will win Finals MVP.
Was there a game tonight?
Curry did win Finals MVP, the first of his career, and the Warriors franchise won its seventh overall championship, dating all the way back to the formation of the BAA, where they were its inaugural champion.
With its win, the Warriors surpassed the Chicago Bulls for the third-most championships in league history, behind only the Celtics and Lakers with 17 each.
Final playoff bracket:
A very good ESPN article, @ekedolphin , thank you.
This series was a dog fight. A casual outsider might say, hey they won 4 games to 2 so it wasn’t even that close. But, no. To this casual observer the Celtics were the more powerful team. Bigger. Stronger. Really good from downtown (see Al Horford’s game 1, and that’s Al Horford). Jayson Tatum, what a talent. Don’t get me wrong, the Warriors have talent, but in many games, even some that Golden State won, the Celtics were the tougher, more physical team.
But especially last night in game six, and particularly in the 4th period, it was clear which team was mentally tougher. The Celtics caved in, and the Warriors beat them down and crushed their spirits.
Ime Udoka was clearly outcoached and Steve Kerr was the better tactician and it became very clear that Golden State was the better team.
I even think that if the coaches switched teams, that the Celtics coached by Steve Kerr would beat the Warriors coached by Ime Udoka. But that’s a wild conjecture.
We didn’t get past half-time. It was apparent that the Celtics were overmatched in game 6, although I’m not sure why. They came out strong and then just seemed to fall apart. I didn’t really have a dog in this fight, but was rooting for Boston mainly because I used to back in the Bird days, and because I really dislike Draymond Green’s court thuggery.
From that ESPN article, re: Steph Curry coming off the bench for the first three games of the Nuggets series:
As the public address announcer performed player introductions prior to each of the first four games against the Nuggets, Curry found himself in an unusual spot – standing near Kerr on the bench while Poole joined the four starters near center court. As the teams readied themselves for the opening tip, Kerr would turn to Curry and tell him, “If you work hard enough, one day you too can start an NBA playoff game.”
Although a lot of things were in play, I suspect plain old fatigue was one of them. Just read that not only did Tatum play the 4th most amount of minutes in the regular season, but he also played the most minutes of any player in the playoffs in a decade. The Celtics just don’t have a reliable bench and they rode their starters into the ground. Same thing used to happen to Harden when he was in Houston - heavy workload in the season, followed by being obviously gassed in the playoffs as they progressed.
They commit a horrific amount of turnovers (to be fair, Golden State was 2nd in the league in most turnovers in the regular season and the Celtics in the middle of the pack, and 2nd most turnovers in the playoffs; the Celtics were 1st). Granted, they cause a lot of turnovers too, but it just leads to sloppy, chaotic play overall. Maybe part of that is fatigue, but their TOV numbers are fairly consistent between the regular season and the playoffs. Tatum alone committed 100 turnovers in the playoffs. You can’t do that!
Steph Curry was just incredible.
He put up crazy numbers on the Celtics. He averaged 31.2 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 2.0 steals per game, with a 62.6 true shooting percentage.
The Warriors’ offensive rating in the Finals with Curry on the floor was 115.8, an easy team-high. When he was on the bench, Golden State managed a paltry 88.6 offensive rating, per Official NBA Stats | Stats | NBA.com, a difference of 28.4 points per 100 possessions.
The singular offensive impact Curry provides has been obvious for the better part of a decade. It existed in each of his five previous trips to the Finals, too, his notorious lack of individual hardware notwithstanding.
I wonder where Curry ranks amongst the greatest of all time?
I don’t know much about basketball analytics, but Basketball Reference says that in terms of value above replacement, Curry is the 26th greatest player in NBA history, sandwiched between Gary Payton and Vince Carter. Of course, that is purely a regular season measure and if you consider playoff accomplishments and rings that vaults him way past the likes of Vince Carter.
Mind you, that measure also says John Stockton is the third greatest player in NBA history (it only starts adding this measure up in the 70s I think, so doesn’t include the likes of Russell or Chamberlain) so I am not sure if it means a lot.
Curry’s teams in the playoffs, I mean, it’s crazy. The Warriors have played 26 playoff series with Curry and have won 22 of them. Curry is 93-41 in playoff games and averages more points and assists per game in the playoffs than he does the regular season.
I dunno. Who’s above Curry? Jordan and Lebron, I’d also say Kareem and Magic for sure. Or can you even make the comparison? Curry is so dramatically DIFFERENT for players before the 3-point era.
Basketball super-fan Bill Simmons, whose basketball podcast I very occasionally listen to, just moved him up into his personal top 10 all time with this latest victory. Ahead of him he lists Jordan, Lebron James, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant. And he thinks Curry has at least an argument for leapfrogging Bryant.
I’d put KD ahead of Curry. Perhaps David Robinson also?
There aren’t many on that list. ETA — the eras are so different. Tough to compare players from the different eras. Oscar Robertson? Jerry West?
Until this series Simmons had three of those (Durant, Robertson, and West, but not Robinson) ahead of Curry, with Curry @ #16. In his mind Curry has leap-frogged those three + Hakeem Olajuwon, Moses Malone and Shaquille O’Neal. This was Simmons’ Top 96 in 2010, with Robinson @ #29. He does this re-ranking of the best thing constantly as a kind of personal exercise. Since 2010 there has obviously been some shifting, with LeBron now in his #2 slot and Curry cracking the top ten.
I think the argument for Curry is that in addition to his offensive gravity, phenomenal shooting (with numerous records) and overall ‘best team player’ profile, he fundamentally changed how the game is played in the modern era. As the avatar of that change, he gets a little extra oomph. But really his stats are just flat-out impressive regardless (so far). But yeah, when you start talking the very top of the game and cross-comparing eras it becomes sort of an exercise in hair-splitting. I think Simmons list is reasonable, but I think you could argue a somewhat different one without too much difficulty. Just depends what you value.
ETA: I mean nutty anti-vaxxer John Stockton is the all time assist and steal leader by a good margin. Should that vault him into a higher spot than #25? Heck if I know, but I could see the argument being made.
ETA 2: Arguably there is some recency bias and personal bias always built into these as well. Simmons is a huge Curry fan and an even bigger Celtics fan. He was pretty impressed with how Curry helped dismantle his beloved favorite team.