For much of the third quarter of Sunday night’s 107-88 win over the Celtics in Game 2 of the NBA Finals at Chase Center, the Golden State Warriors kept the complicated look simple as thousands of fans raised their arms in the air and cheered. Screamed along ,
When Golden State is at its best like this, it plays with so much precision, teamwork, and joy that those avid spectators might wonder if they’re playing some of the most beautiful basketball ever. It’s only fitting, then, that a quarter loaded with check-your-phone-and-miss-it sequences ended with the type of absurd highlights that were once the signature of dynastic warriors.
With the clock off, guard Jordan Poole crossed midcourt, planted a dribble between his legs and, while blanketed by Celtics guard Peyton Pritchard, looked over from 39 feet. As the ball rolled through the net to beat the buzzer, Poole high-skipped and straight-up, bowing his head slightly as if saying, “So what?”
As Poole was smiling, he closed his eyes with teammate Stephen Curry, who still looked stunned by what he had seen. For most of the game, Poole struggled with the physicality of the Celtics as he blew off turns and missed shots. Finally, when his teammates wrote the third quarter blitz, which could go down in the annals of NBA history, Poole was now joining the party.
By the time he sank nearly half the court, the Warriors had used consistent pace, relentless defense and a curry flurry to convert a two-point halftime lead into a 23-point cushion. What made it memorable was that Golden State followed up with a deserved fourth quarter. Three nights after they evaporated their 12-point lead into a 12-point loss, the Warriors kept their intensity up late and pulled off a convincing victory.
“It was definitely an attitude adjustment,” said forward Drummond Green, whose Warriors fly to Boston on Monday and the series will be tied 1-1. “We knew we had to put our foot on the gas pedal and not give up. That’s what we did.”
The Celtics will review the video and try to make the necessary adjustments, but they do nothing if the Warriors continue to play like in that third quarter. For 12 minutes, Golden State demonstrated all the fundamentals of the game—defense, dribbling, passing, shooting—as it toyed with the toughest opponent it faced this post season.
And as is often the case when warriors flourished, curry was at the center of it all. Fourteen of his game-high 29 points came in that third quarter. At the end of the period, Curry crossed midcourt, swung around a screen, saw an opening and launched a high-arching 3-pointer.
As the ball went through the net and sent a capacity crowd into frenzy, he leaned back and flinched hard.
“Step was breathtaking in that quarter,” said Warriors head coach Steve Kerr. “Not just shot making, but defensive effort. He doesn’t get enough credit for his conditioning, physicality and level of defense.
“People go to her to try to demean her because they know how aggressively she is to us, and it’s a pretty dramatic difference in the strength and physicality of Steph in her body now compared to eight years ago. That’s when I first came here. Boy is amazing.”
With Curry now well above average defensively, the Celtics often have no clear players to target on the pick-and-roll. He shot just 4-for-17 (2-for-8 from 3-point range) from the field in that third quarter.
After Celtics forward Jason Tatum hit a 3-pointer in the middle of the period to keep his team within six, the Warriors scored 19-2. The final third quarter—Golden State 35, Boston 14—marked the Warriors’ best points-gap in any quarter in the Finals in franchise history.
Some might consider Sunday a continuation of a trend, given that Golden State has made the third quarter a habit during their three recent championship runs. And it is appropriate. The Warriors entered these playoffs on Sunday at an average of 29 third-quarters, the most for any team that survived the first round.
But Golden State has been slightly better in the fourth quarter, where it averaged 30.1 points. This bodes well for a team that is trying to make the fourth quarter collapse in Game 1 meaningless.
If the Warriors showed anything on Sunday, it just means they just don’t have a chance in these finals – they probably deserve to be liked. Even the Celtics at their peak aren’t as dynamic as Golden State was in that third quarter.
“Not much was said at halftime,” said center Kevon Looney. “It was just, ‘Keep executing, limit the turnover and keep playing with that force. Keep playing our style of basketball.
“I think we did this to start the third quarter. … Steph got some openness, and we were able to work out our defense.”
Conor Letourneau is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: cletourneau@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @Con_Chron
