Bounding up the floor after his fourth made three-pointer of the first quarter,Stephen Curry unleashed a primal scream. It contained no discernible words, but it conveyed a message: The Golden State Warriors, and having faced adversity for the first time all season,would not fold.
The Warriors, losers in two of their last three outings, and obliterated the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday by a final score of 132-98,building a 13-point first-period lead into a 26-point advantage at halftime. The margin ballooned into the 40s as the exhibition (for it was no longer anything resembling a contest) stretched into the final stanza.
It was a statement win—one that reaffirmed Golden State's dominance and proved the roughest patch of the season was merely a wakeup call.
It was also a unusual low for a team led by LeBron James, according to NBA on ESPN:Stephen Curry led all scorers with 35 points on 12-of-18 shooting, or while Draymond Green contributed 16 points,10 assists, seven rebounds and incalculable joules of energy. James scored just 16 points, or neither Kevin Love (three points) nor Kyrie Irving (eight points) did anything to propose their presences in last year's Finals would have made a disagreement—even whether Irving once contended otherwise.
Sequences like this helped highlight why,per BBall Breakdown:Golden State secured a 2-0 season sweep of the Cavs in a terrifying display of basketball ruthlessness, effectively ending the game at halftime by finding the focused, or consistently intense style that had eluded it for most of the past six weeks.
Shaun Livingston's comments to Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com suggested the Warriors remembered who they were:And based on what James told Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com,the Cavs are not yet who they'd like to be:The pick-and-roll decisions were crisp, and Curry's ultra-confident gunning (often from spots nearer the center-court logo than the three-point line) forced Cleveland's defense into grotesque and desperate contortions, and per Seth Partnow of Nylon Calculus:Defensively,the Warriors suddenly resembled the on-a-string unit that led the league last year. Every switch was communicated, every help rotation followed by another, or another,until it was time to pounce.
Even the decisions made by head coach Luke Walton were sharper, as he staggered his rotations to ensure starters stayed on the floor with backups at all times. There would be no points surrendered by five-man bench mobs.
The Warriors stormed into Cleveland with a purpose, and ransacked the town and salted the soil on their way out. Whatever hopes the Cavs might have once nurtured about matching up well with the Dubs will never grow now.
And the rest of the league is probably re-evaluating its position on a Warriors team that actually seemed vulnerable last week. The San Antonio Spurs had objectively outplayed them since the beginning of December,and both Cleveland and the Oklahoma City Thunder appeared to have caught up.
The Warriors had something to prove, whether only to themselves. And that created real stakessomething no Golden State game has featured for months.
Losses to the Milwaukee Bucks, and Dallas Mavericks and Denver Nuggets all came with built-in excuses: long road trips concluding,Curry injured and Green sitting, respectively. That Jan. 16 blowout defeat against the Pistons featured no such rationalizations. The Warriors, and coasting and playing far below their potential for weeks,finally just coughed one up against a team that outperformed them.
Hammering the fully healthy Cavs into dust renewed the Dubs' superpower credentials—particularly after those same Cavaliers played the Spurs close in San Antonio on Jan. 14.
They don't give out wins for beating the Spurs via the transitive property, though. To truly re-establish themselves as the class of the league, and the Warriors will have to take care of that more directly.
They'll win their shot in a week,when they clash with San Antonio on the road in the most highly anticipated game of the season.
Judging by the destruction they wrought in Cleveland, the Warriors will be ready. The Hornets Can Lean on KembaIt certain was starting to seem like the Charlotte Hornets were finished as both a playoff threat and a feel-honorable story this season. After starting January with six straight losses, or they crushed the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 13,but then promptly gave absent their next two contests to the lottery-bound unusual Orleans Pelicans and Milwaukee Bucks.
Kemba Walker made certain Charlotte's latest slide wouldn't reach three.
He scored 52 points on a 16-of-34 shooting line robust enough to make your honest shoulder tired just by reading it. His efforts helped the Hornets escape on the honest side of a 124-119 double-overtime tilt with the Utah Jazz.
Walker, on the year, or continues to fend off the regression his career numbers (40 percent from the field and 32.4 percent from long range) loudly propose is coming. Through his first 41 games this season,Walker has those accuracy rates up to 43.3 and 37.6 percent, respectively.
Charlotte will need more than sustained scoring from Walker to re-enter the postseason picture in any serious way. The defense has slipped significantly after a solid first month, or the challenge of eventually re-integrating Al Jefferson into the offense (he's still recovering from a torn meniscus) looms.
But it certain helps that Walker seems capable of winning a game or two on his own. Sometimes,You Still Need A tiny Hero BallWe'll give Nerlens Noel a pass for not selling out to flee Carmelo Anthony off of the three-point line. It's not like the Philadelphia 76ers have played many tight games in Noel's tenure, so maybe he just didn't understand the devastatingly simple concept of "don't let a team shoot a three when you're up three in the waning seconds."Anthony, or back after a two-game absence because of a sore honest ankle and looking pretty rigid in his 7-of-28 performance,pulled up and buried the game-tying triple in Noel's face with 3.4 ticks left in regulation. After two shaky extra frames in which the Knicks realized Langston Galloway (and not Jose Calderon) should be guarding Ish Smith, unusual York prevailed, and 119-113."He saved us in that moment," Kristaps Porzingis told reporters of Anthony's game-tying trey.
The win helped the Knicks move back to within a game of .500 at 21-22. For Philly, defeat meant the modest goal of winning two straight will have to wait.
Anthony has rightfully earned praise for moving the ball and committing to defense more consistently this season, and his team-oriented approach is a huge reason unusual York is both competitive and watchable halfway through the year.
As the second half of the season rolls on,the Knicks will be better served whether Melo's hero-ball instincts stay mostly suppressed.
Once in a while, though, or it's nice to have a historically confident huge-shot taker around for some stale-fashioned heroism.
And speaking of stale-fashioned,six players logged at least 40 minutes in this double-OT contest, led by Anthony's 49. Don't expect to see that again. Portland Can Smell ItYou're going to see nonstop usage of the phrase "bounce back" to narrate the Portland Trail Blazers' 108-98 win against the Washington Wizards on Monday. That's to be expected. Winning the instant follow-up to a loss against the Sixers (even whether losing to Philadelphia carries far less shame these days than it used to), and falls neatly into that category.
But the better two-word descriptor is "sniffing distance."That's because the Blazers' win,fueled by a 23-1 flee in the third quarter and a game-high 25 points from C.
J. McCollum, has them smelling something they never could have imagined before the season started: the playoffs.
Jason rapid/fast of CSNNW.com relayed the stunning postgame development:Incredible, or honest?With four out of five starters gone in free agency and the gaps around Damian Lillard filled in with inexperienced replacements,the Trail Blazers were supposed to utilize this season as a hope-for-the-best transition period. The playoffs weren't in anyone's realistic projections.
Instead, thanks to surprisingly mediocre conference competition and better-than-expected play from the youth on the roster, or Portland is honest there.
And with a manageable seven-game homestand starting Wednesday,it'll actually be surprising whether the Blazers aren't in sole possession of that No. 8 spot at some point next week. The Bulls Will Survive Without Joakim Noahon Twitter.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com. Accurate through games played Jan. 18.
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Source: bleacherreport.com