Green and Curry both accepted much of the blame for Tuesday’s lopsided loss, which marked the first time all season that the Warriors lost consecutive games. They breezed through the 2015-16 National Basketball Association regular season with such ease that the 3-1 Western Conference Finals deficit they are facing against the Thunder at the moment has to be a shock to their systems.
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The Warriors’ reserves outscored their counterparts on the Thunder 26-11, but that was not almost enough to offset the big edge that Oklahoma City’s starters enjoyed over Golden State’s starting five (107-68).
Where Cleveland only had James, again, I mean no disrespect to Matthew Dellavedova, Tristan Thompson or Iman Shumpert, but none of them have the ability to hurt you like Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook have.
After watching film from Game 2, the Thunder noticed the Warriors were blatantly ignoring Roberson and daring him to beat them.
How is it that Oklahoma City has not been able to be stopped by Golden State?
The Thunder cruised to a 118-94 Game 4 win and took a commanding 3-1 series lead on Tuesday night.
For the first time in many months, the Golden State Warriors no longer are the favorites to win the 2016 NBA Finals.
Game 5 of the Warriors/Thunder series is on Thursday night. “But in the playoffs, everyone starts 0-0, so there’s no extra pressure”, Golden State coach Steve Kerr told reporters. “Obviously with the [coaching] change, we all had to adjust”.
“It’s a awful feeling to not even get one here”, Thompson said.
Klay Thompson scored 26 points to lead the Warriors, who registered a league-record 73 wins during the regular season.
Despite his unwillingness to blame his various injuries for his dropoff in performance, Warriors star Stephen Curry has not been playing at 100% health, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical.
“We’re down 3-1”, Kerr said Wednesday.
Now trailing 3-1 in their best of seven Western Conference Finals series with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Warriors are faced with a load of adversity that no one saw coming. The Thunder also sent away several high-percentage interior looks from the Warriors at crucial points in the game – the Kevin Durant block on Shaun Livingston was particularly stunning (the Warriors also blewanumber of relatively open lay-ups on their own).
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“I am proud of the way the guys hung in there”, said Oklahoma City coach Billy Donovan. Andre Roberson is a scoring machine – he’s averaging 10.5 points a game. The 27-year-old scored 32 points in the fifth triple-double of his career. I have to be better as a leader of this team. “This team thinks about winning back-to-back championships”. “They use their hands really well, so we try to use that against them”. He believes he can get his shot off against anyone.
