SAN FRANCISCO — Finally, in the clutch, everything went right.
Coach Steve Kerr called a timeout with three-ish seconds left to play and the Warriors down two, victims of a Devin Booker flurry. Brandin Podziemski cringed as his inbound pass spun just out of defender Bradley Beal’s reach into the passing lane to Steph Curry, who swept up the ball and in one fell motion turned to his right, planted his feet beyond the arc and tossed up a rainbow 3. Swish. The lead.
But 0.7 seconds remained. Not nearly enough time to blink twice but, for this year’s Warriors, plenty of time to utterly collapse.
“The way that our season has gone, 0.7 seconds felt like an eternity,” Curry said.
Golden State could flash back to Nikola Jokic’s prayer 3 that banked in with 0.7 seconds left, or Chet Holmgren’s buzzer-beating 3 in an OT loss and, days later, his trio of game-winning free throws made off a Draymond Green faux-pas foul. In Los Angeles in December, Paul George bleached their 22-point lead with a game-winning 3 and earlier this month LeBron James got the last say in a double-OT bout with two game-winning free throws. To name a few. Some of these heartbreaks took a few seconds, some less than one, but all begged the question: Why is this pedigreed, veteran team prone to losing its composure?
With 0.7 seconds left, all those doubts flooded in when the whistle blew. Andrew Wiggins was draped over Booker, fouling him as he received an inbound pass from Grayson Allen. It was all good, Curry loudly assured his teammates, they had a foul to spare, but only a tenth of a second ticked off the clock. But this time, composure they had. Green deflected Allen’s inbound pass to Kevin Durant, pounded his chest and shouted at Durant a reminder: The Warriors as we know them are still here.
“Steph has had several shots like that down the stretch this year and we haven’t been able to close it down on the defensive end,” Green said. “So it was very important to get the shots and close the game out.”
The Warriors’ 113-112 win against the Phoenix Suns was the clutch win this team promised they had in them. It was also a culmination of a clear momentum shift.
That shift is rooted in sharpened defensive intensity that transformed when Green returned from indefinite suspension on Jan. 15. His fingerprints are all over a 112.2 defensive rating since his return that ranks in the NBA’s top five over that span. Flanked by Jonathan Kuminga and Andrew Wiggins, that Warriors defense is showing that it can contend with the top defensive teams. Getting Gary Payton II back in the fold to guard the perimeter, the Warriors held Phoenix’s Big Three to 112 points, which is nearly unheard of in this offense-heavy league.
“His defense, speed and on-ball pressure,” Kerr said of Payton. “We had him on Kevin (Durant) quite a bit and as soon as he got in the game. He got the fast break dunk, knocked down a three. You just feel his presence out there. That is why he is such a fan favorite.”
Green’s own mental shift revealed itself most. The team’s defensive advantage needs Green on edge and he had the ultimate test up against Suns center Jusuf Nurkic — the player Green swung and hit in December to earn his indefinite suspension.
Green got his first technical foul for arguing a no-call and Nurkic started his campaign to get Green out of the game. Green drew a charge on Nurkic and pointed to his head in an apparent taunt, then Nurkic scored over Green and taunted him with a “too little” celebration and Green answered back with the same.
“He was hitting me a lot today. You should go back and watch the film, key in on and look at him,” Green said. “Lot of cheap shots. But I know his goal was to get me out of the game. No one wants to see me in the game, because that makes the game a lot tougher.”
After the game, Nurkic went after Green’s character, evoking the same cries for him to check his mental health he spouted after his Flagrant 2 in December.
“It’s sad. He didn’t learn anything. Just a matter of time. He’s going to hit somebody else again. Take back everything I said. He don’t deserve a chance,” Nurkic told reporters. “Antics. Try to hit people.”
Green took a long pause when asked for his response to Nurkic.
“I thought I was pretty great tonight, honestly,” he said. “I thought he tried to get in my head and it didn’t work. If you want me to walk around quiet like him, I’m never going to do that. Quiet guys don’t win. I thought I was pretty great tonight. So yeah, he can keep riding that same horse he rode in on and ride his ass out of here on that same horse. It ain’t working.”
Curry not only defended Green, but lauded his ability to avoid risky antics while maintaining his competitive fire. The Warriors are at their best when Green balances that thin line.
“He gave us that sense of competitive spirit we need to meet the moment,” Curry said. “I know everyone is going to talk about what Nurkic said and how idiotic that was, but the fact that Draymond knows how to walk the line that he needs to walk, this is the best game you’ve seen it where he can be loud, competitive and fiery and jaw back and forth. But we’re playing basketball, and if you didn’t see that tonight, watch it again.
“All the talk, Draymond was in his head. Plain and simple…Everyone talks about how much Draymond needed to change and figure it out during the suspension, tonight was the exact playbook of how to play basketball at a high level. I loved it.”