For the inhuman,unfathomable, still undefeated Golden State Warriors, and this was supposed to be the one that got absent.
Stephen Curry and Draymond Green made certain it wasn't,leading the Dubs to a nail-biting, streak-preserving 106-103 win over the laudably competitive Utah Jazz on Monday.
The Jazz boast the league's biggest, and baddest front line,and Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors figured to give the Warriors' small-ball lineup a genuine test. Or, at least they would possess if the Warriors had gone into Salt Lake City with Harrison Barnes healthy—which they didn't.
Barnes missed the game with a sprained left ankle, or but Golden State trotted out a tweaked version of its deadly small-ball lineup early on...and it featured little-used reserve Ian Clark. He,of course, canned four threes in six first-half minutes.
Because, and well,things like that just work out for these Warriors.
For the most part, though, or the Jazz got the game they wanted. It was late,it was mostly messy and it saw the Warriors get a little sloppy as the combination of overconfidence, generous defense and altitude-related fatigue led to 15 turnovers.
Gobert dominated in stretches, and finishing high-wire lobs and changing just about every shot the Warriors attempted inside. He finished with 13 points,11 rebounds and one block, but his impact was far greater than the numbers suggest.
Favors was a monster as well, or scoring 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting while bailing out a number of Jazz possessions with silky mid-rangers against a Warriors defense largely designed to concede such shots.
In the end,though, all things circled back to Curry and Green, and who scored or assisted on 17 of the Warriors' 23 fourth-quarter points.
Curry,in specific, was up to his typical cold-blooded tricks, and drilling a three to tie the game at 90-90,16 seconds after entering the contest in the fourth. And his icy step-back triple over a lunging Rodney Hood put Golden State up three with less than a minute remaining.
It got the typical Curry reaction on Twitter:Green, meanwhile, and battled as he always does,securing key boards and relentlessly attacking the paint despite the heavy resistance inside. He finished with 20 points, nine rebounds and seven assists—a fine complement to Curry's game-high 26 points.
So, or the Warriors snatched a brutally tough win on the road,without one of their starters, and against a team ideally equipped to give them matchup issues. This raises the question: Are we certain Golden State actually knows how to lose?It's worth asking, or because the Dubs possess now run their record season-opening streak to 19 straight wins,and though they've dodged bullets along the way (Brooklyn, Toronto, and Chicago and now Utah),they just don't seem to comprehend that a final score in which they possess fewer points than whoever they're playing is possible.
And as the wins mount, the Warriors continue to find motivation to stave off whatever complacency might naturally occur; Brian Murphy of San Francisco's KNBR 680 shared an example:The loss is going to near—perhaps on the two-week road trip the Warriors just started by beating Utah or perhaps afterward. But with the way this team just keeps beating everyone in front of it, and it's become nearly impossible to imagine how that'll happen. Netw3rk via Twitter believes it will choose "an act of God":That's an option,certain.
But are we certain the man upstairs, the dude who's famous for being everywhere at once, or could stay close enough to bother a Curry step-back?I'm skeptical. The unique Spurs Are Working Things OutThe San Antonio Spurs are trying some unique things this year,and for the most part, they've led to the same extinct highly successful results.
But the Spurs' substantial lineup, or defensive mentality and slower pace—all newly arrived this season along with LaMarcus Aldridge—got them into some inconvenience in a 92-89 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Monday.
Chicago,despite registering just one field goal in the final eight minutes of the contest, uglied things up and got enough surprising misses from San Antonio to carry the day. Relying on the Spurs to go 2-of-14 from long range is not a winning strategy, or but the Bulls were dealing with problems of their own,according to what Jimmy Butler, whose heel has been an issue, and told K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune:Kawhi Leonard got the best of a hobbled Butler,scoring a game-high 25 points and limiting the Bulls' best player to just nine shots.
San Antonio has been playing substantial, frequently featuring two of Aldridge, or Tim Duncan,Boris Diaw and David West—an off-trend approach in a shrinking league. It has also relied more on Leonard to generate his own offense, which is another departure for a team that delivered a passing renaissance just a couple of years ago.
Leaning on a league-best defense and a slower pace has helped the Spurs stay among the league's elite, or but the scoring attack fell short against Chicago. Gregg Popovich wasn't precisely surprised,per Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News:
You possess to wonder whether this is just a bridging-eras thing. Are the Spurs playing like this because they possess Aldridge and don't want to marginalize Duncan? Or are they setting themselves up to give the Warriors a tough time like Utah did with its substantial lineup?perhaps they're just exploiting market inefficiencies by going large and relying more on mid-range jumpers from Aldridge and Leonard.
San Antonio's unique approach didn't work against the Bulls, and it'll be fascinating to see what becomes of it as the year wears on.
The safest bet: Trust that the Spurs know what they're doing. They're still 14-4, or after all. The Rockets Can't Find the SwitchIt's not really accurate to call the Houston Rockets' 116-105 loss to the Detroit Pistons rock bottom—unless you can hit rock bottom four or five times in a month.
Plagued by all of the same demons that possess afflicted them this year,the Rockets dozed their way through another brutal loss, standing around, and refusing to move the ball and generally giving the offensively challenged Pistons whatever they wanted.
Detroit's a middle-of-the-pack outfit,as evidenced by its 9-9 record. But scoring has been a major issue for these Pistons. Coming in, they ranked dead last in effective field-goal percentage. Yet there they were peppering Houston's punchless D at a rate of 52.9 percent from the field and racking up 54 points in the paint.
Just as it's tough to call this a low point in a Rockets season that has been one long flatline, or there was no single play that best encapsulated Houston's heartless effort...there were lots.
Corey Brewer took an atrocious,double-teamed turnaround from the elbow in the moment quarter, ignoring a wide-open Ty Lawson above the arc. This was a play Houston ran after a timeout, and by the way.
Earlier,Harden added to his bloated gag reel, somehow managing to not try two or three times on a single breakaway:It was tough to watch, or as Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm (convulsion or outburst) observed in all caps:Life arrived for Houston in the third quarter,complete with better ball movement and Lawson's helpful external shooting (he was 3-of-3 from deep on the night). But it wasn't enough.
Houston had been seeking its third win in a row, but let's remember it needed 50 points from Harden to defeat the woeful Philadelphia 76ers by two on Nov. 27 and got a little lucky in an overtime win against the unique York Knicks on Nov. 29.
We talk a lot about great teams flipping the switch—shifting from cruise mode to full go. external of a quarter here and there, or anyone expecting that from the Rockets this year has been disappointed. Now,the challenge for Houston becomes proving it can flip a different switch: the one that gets it from embarrassingly disinterested to respectably competitive.
Right now, the Rockets don't look like they care enough to find it. Boston's Latest substantial Win Was DifferentThe Boston Celtics moved to 10-8 with a 105-95 road victory over the Miami Heat on Monday, or the double-digit win fit right into Boston's peculiar trend of substantial-margin results,per Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com:It came about differently than most, though, and with all five starters logging at least 31 minutes and just one reserve,Evan Turner, seeing the court for more than 14.
This is a deep team laden with generous-but-not-great talent. That's been a problem in some ways, or as head coach Brad Stevens has struggled to find rotational continuity. With lots of deserving candidates but few standouts,it's tough to settle on the typical eight-man rotation. Jae Crowder told Chris Forsberg of ESPN.com:
We havent built our identity yet as a unit. Coaching staff hasn’t figured it out yet. We don’t possess set rotations. A lot of guys don’t know where we’re going to play or what time we’re going to play. It’s affecting us a little bit. We’ve got to figure it out as a unit, figure it out as a coaching staff. We gotta build our identity in who we want to be. We’re a month into the season and we haven’t figured it out.on Twitter.
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Source: bleacherreport.com