On this night in which sharpshooter Klay Thompson couldn’t find his stroke for three quarters and the Blazers’ brilliant backcourt duo of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum found theirs after a brutal Game 1 showing, and the Warriors trailed by as many as 17 points, Golden State closed like champs. “We’ve been down and out before… And in that fourth quarter we weren’t hunting for shots and playing stingy defense, and we were just locked in on both sides of the ball”.
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Al-Farouq Aminu (14 points), Gerald Henderson (12) and Harkless (11) also scored in double figures for Portland, which lost the first two road games in its first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers before rebounding with four consecutive wins.
Portland was in prime position to steal Home Court Advantage in Game 2 of its series against Golden State, but an very bad fourth quarter doomed the Blazers.
Klay Thompson scored 27 points to lead Golden State, which has been without Curry since the point guard injured his knee in Game 4 of their first-round series in Houston.
Green added 17 points with 14 rebounds and seven assists while Andre Iguodala added 15 points from the bench.
“He changed the whole game”, said Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who had played Andrew Bogut, Anderson Varejao and Marreese Speights at center over the first six-plus quarters of the series.
“To get knocked down on the canvas like that, the air punctured out of your body, to show the mental resolve to come back and take control of overtime – that’s great mental toughness that I think we showed from there”. “He’s going through the rehab process and he’s making the improvement that we are looking for, but he hasn’t been on the floor with the team at this point”. “It got to the point where it was win or lose”.
Thompson, coming off a career playoff-high 37 points in Sunday’s 118-106 Game 1 win, shot 7 for 20 with five 3-pointers. But Portland answered with a 13-6 spurt, with Lillard coolly dropping in a 3-pointer to give the Blazers a 10-point lead. He was feeling it in Game 1 but had just seven points on 3 of 9 shooting at the half. Stephen Curry is questionable with a knee injury. Kerr did acknowledge Tuesday that a layoff until Saturday for Game 3 is beneficial to Curry’s recovery. The crowd was building up to that “we’re gonna drop an absurd three on your head and then stomp on your grave” roar as the Warriors cut the lead to six, four, and three. The super-switching concepts rely on intensity to be successful, which really means that they rely on Green to lead the way. They allowed 12 points in the fourth quarter, matching the fewest they’ve yielded in the fourth quarter of a postseason game. And just as so many had incorrectly assumed that the Spurs’ momentum would continue unabated, there was a strong sense heading into Game 2 of this Warriors-Blazers affair that this was an even more one-sided matchup.
“But we have to believe in him, we do believe in him, and he’s going to come out of it”.
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But after Livingston hit a jump shot to pull the Warriors within 49-46 to force a Portland timeout, the Trail Blazers responded.
