As I sat there watching American Airlines Center leak endlessly while the camera panned between Mark Cuban and the Mavericks’ ceiling, I tried to take hold of what was actually happening in Game 4 of the 2022 Western Conference Finals.
The Golden State Warriors had an opportunity to book a ticket to the NBA Finals for the 6th time in 8 years. Instead, they found themselves down by 15 at halftime to a team that clearly wasn’t ready to be in the Western Conference Finals to this point.
But the Mavericks didn’t look like the team that didn’t belong on Tuesday. Instead, that was the Warriors. It was a weird game. They were putrid defensively. They had free throws get stuck on the rim. It was one of the most un-Warriros-like performances we’ve seen from them this postseason — that huge Grizzlies blowout sets the standard there.
As the Warriors continued to struggle to put away another opponent, a quote from Steph Curry just kept entering my mind.
It was from the first round of the playoffs after Game 5 when the Warriors finally closed out the Denver Nuggets. I say finally because it took a lot to get there. The Warriors entered the quarter down by 8 points and couldn’t seem to buy a bucket.
But they eventually found a way to close the game out and Curry had this to say afterward during his postgame interview with TNT’s Jared Greenberg.
“I think you can see through these first three quarters, we forgot what it felt like to try and close out a game. The nerves. The energy in the building…We still know how to do it, but you have to kind of grind it out.”
That quote came after a Game 5 win, but that mentality has also seemed to plague the Warriors throughout this postseason so far.
They’ve got four losses total in this year’s playoffs. Three of those four losses came in elimination games — Game 4 against the Nuggets, Game 5 against the Grizzlies and, now, Game 4 against the Mavericks.
The Warriors were up 3-0 in Denver, up 3-1 in Memphis and up 3-0 in Dallas.
They lost all three closeout games.
They must really want the home gate receipts 💰 pic.twitter.com/YcD5MzgQE6
— StatMuse (@statmuse) May 25, 2022
That feels like a problem. Maybe not a big one, but a problem nonetheless.
It’s not all doom and gloom, obviously. The thing about closeout games is that you’ve got to put yourself in a position to close another team out and the Warriors have done that better than everyone else this postseason. They just haven’t always been able to close the deal. And closeout games are hard. As Curry said, there’s a certain grind to it when the other team has their backs up against the wall.
But still. It’s something to keep an eye on moving forward with Golden State. They’ll get out of this series against the Mavericks.
But the next round? They’ll see the best of the Eastern Conference and they’ll be playing for all the marbles. Fail to close out there after taking a series lead and it could mean another epic comeback.
After all, this is the same championship core that blew a 3-1 lead.
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