There’s an old NBA adage that a series doesn’t really start until one team wins on the road. If you subscribe to that logic, the Western Conference Finals have officially started.
On Sunday night, the Warriors secured a 3-0 lead with a captivating 109-100 win.
Andrew Wiggins and Kevon Looney should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame
Alright, maybe this is getting a wee bit carried way. Just a tad.
But the Warriors aren’t winning these games without Andrew Wiggins and Kevon Looney. They are the duo who have damned the opposition with their unceasing physicality, defensive acumen and intelligence.
It’s that third part that is especially compelling. The Warriors aren’t like Dallas or most other teams.
There is a long-instituted system that emphasizes fundamentals; it’s about cutting, screening, boxing out and distributing the ball.
The duo of Wiggins and Looney has paced the Warriors throughout these playoffs in astounding fashion.
Both of them have been relentless on defense and on the boards and are peaking, showing out at career-best levels at the same time.
Kevon Looney remained staunch and is still the clear-cut best, if not only center in this series. He had a few scores early, an impressive and-1 and was all over the glass again.
He’s been incredible in these playoffs and finished with 9 points, 12 rebounds, 4 assists and a steal.
But let’s talk about Wiggins.
This is a former No. 1 overall pick who has been, at certain points in his career, the laughingstock of the league. He was not taken seriously.
Those jokes have evaporated. Long gone. Burnt off into the lower layers of the atmosphere.
His Game 3 performance was astonishing. He played after entering as questionable with a sore ankle. He took responsibility for guarding Luka Doncic for most of the game and did another stellar job, regardless of Doncic’s 40 points and 11 rebounds.. Doncic is going to do that just about always.
But we already know how dominant a defender Wiggins is. It was his impact elsewhere that changed the course of this game.
And what we’ll all remember most about this game is this dunk. This disrespectful, hands-on-your head, bench-erupting dunk that made bars erupt and people explode out of their seats.
Thank the heavens the referees came to their sense and overturned this.
Moments later, he slammed home another fairly ridiculous dunk, this time a putback
He finished with a playoff career-high 27 points and 11 rebounds with 3 assists. This is not the Andrew Wiggins from Minnesota. This is a new man, reborn in the playoffs, where he is providing a game-altering advantage in every single aspect.
Steph doing Steph things
It’s easy to take Curry for granted because he’s been doing what he does for so long. But at age 32, he’s become a viable defender and has teaken on multiple other responsibilities besides his scoring.
But when the moment calls, he always gets his.
As the Warriors were scuffling in the first half, looking like they might not make another shot, Curry jolted them.
His shot, too, is back. Those free throw and early game struggles? They haven’t been there the past two games, as he’s looking ever more menacing with each game in this postseason.
On Friday, he was the Warriors’ calm, ice-in-his veins leader again, providing 31 points (10-of-20, 5-of-10 from deep, made all 6 free throws) 11 assists and 5 rebounds.
He’s still extremely good.
“Well it’s floodin’ down in Texas”
This would probably be a more apt line to use if the Warriors had shot the Mavericks out of the building. But they’re still enveloping the Mavericks in a more esoteric sense.
As Dallas native Stevie Ray Vaughn sang on his debut classic and album of the same name, “Texas Flood,” “it’s floodin’ down in Texas.”
Everyone aside from Luka Doncic, Jalen Brunson and Spencer Dinwiddie turtled up.
At the core of this series is the reality that the Mavericks are objectively less talented than the Warriors. There’s quite a bit of hand-wringing about the likes of Maxi Kleber, Dorian Finney-Smith, Reggie Bullock and Davis Bertans missing shots.
Read those names back. Are you really that shocked to see them miss?
Finney-Smith was 3-for-7 (which, hey, not bad!). Bullock was 0-for-10. Kleber was 0-for-5. Bertans was 1-for-3.
The Mavericks have built a team that can drop 150 points on you. Or they can look like a bottom feeder. That’s the reality of having a lineup built upon 3-point shooters who are solely 3-point shooters, but for lack of a better, more objective explanation, they don’t have that “dawg” in them.
They don’t look confident stepping into their shots, so despite whatever vaunted shooting percentages they came into this series with after facing some extremely soft opponents, they don’t look ready for the Warriors.
Kleber refused to look at the hoop at various points in the second half. Bullock looked like he’d never shot a basketball. Doncic put up 40 and 11 and the Mavericks weren’t all that close to winning.
Meanwhile, the Warriors are relentless. Klay Thompson was 1-for-7 in the first half, but finished with 19 points (6-of-18, 3-of-10), 7 rebounds and 3 assists.
Jordan Poole, who had a decent, but not dominant, 10-point, 5-assist night, sent Dallas home with this dagger.
The Warriors are composed of cold-blooded killers. The Mavericks don’t look mentally ready to overcome the not-best version of the Warriors dynasty.