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Warriors-Thunder Game 6: Three things to watch
The Golden State Warriors survived on Thursday, holding off a late Oklahoma City Thunder charge to earn a 120-111 win in Game 5 of the 2016 Western Conference finals behind strong play from several contributors, headlined by the 31 points, seven rebounds, six assists and five steals produced by back-to-back NBA Most Valuable Player Stephen Curry. The win cut OKC's lead in the best-of-seven series to 3-2, and showed the Warriors were capable of bouncing back after the Thunder absolutely ran them off the floor in Games 3 and 4 to draw within one win of an NBA Finals berth.
And yet, while Curry and company did what was necessary to stave off elimination, they're not out of the woods yet. To even the series at three games apiece and earn the opportunity to compete in a winner-take-all Game 7 back in the friendly confines of Oracle Arena on Monday night, they'll have to topple the Thunder in the anything-but-friendly confines of Chesapeake Energy Arena — where Oklahoma City just throttled the 73-win defending champs by a combined 52 points in two games — in Saturday's Game 6.
"It will take all of our IQ, all of our gamesmanship, and just 48 great minutes to get a win down there, considering how the last two games have gone," Curry said after Game 5.
Here are three things to keep an eye on as the Warriors work to fight off the end of their record-setting season and title defense, and the Thunder attempt to finish off a second straight historically great opponent in pursuit of their first NBA Finals appearance since 2012:
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1. Can the Warriors really do all that again?
From an overhead view, it looks like Golden State controlled Game 5. They led for the bulk of the contest after a 15-5 first-quarter run, went into halftime up eight, were up by 11 with 1:01 remaining, and closed out a nine-point win with clutch free-throw shooting in the final half-minute. After two games of getting bum-rushed early and overwhelmed by Oklahoma City's length, athleticism and physicality, the Warriors met force with force early, established an advantage, and largely kept the Thunder at arm's length thereafter.
But the real story, like the devil, lies in the details. Golden State led, yes, but never comfortably, and never seemed to be one Curry flurry or Klay Thompson explosion from shutting the door. The Warriors could never reach escape velocity, because Oklahoma City's megawatt stars and devouring defense just wouldn't let them break free.
The Warriors had to work extremely hard to get and stay one step ahead of the Thunder, keeping the ball and their bodies moving deep into the shot clock in hopes of eventually finding the one crack or crevice in Oklahoma City's shell through which they could burst for a clean look. They had to grind to finish possessions with defensive rebounds, playing OKC even on the boards after getting destroyed on the glass in Games 3 and 4, and had to match the Thunder's chaos-fueled offense by wreaking havoc on defense to the tune of 13 steals, seven blocked shots and 20 points off of turnovers.
They had to redouble their defensive efforts on Thunder superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, who can still torch you no matter what you do, combining for 71 points in the loss, but whom you had better at least make work; SportVU player tracking data lists the Warriors as having gotten good contests on 35 of the dynamic duo's 59 shots, holding KD and Russ to 28.6 percent shooting on those tries. They needed a huge two-way performance from center Andrew Bogut, who had been a foul-prone phantom through four games before morphing into a season-saving game-changer.
He locked down the lane, protected the rim and cleared the defensive glass, helping hold Oklahoma City to just 12 points in the paint when he was on the floor. He extended possessions, kept the ball moving and served as the post-up anchor for the cuts and split actions that helped Golden State's wings find some measure of breathing room against Oklahoma City's suffocating defense. The 31-year-old Aussie gave the Warriors 15 points, 14 rebounds, two assists, two blocks and two steals in 30 minutes, the most he's played in nearly two months, in an effort that prompted Steve Kerr to call him "phenomenal," "tremendous" and "our best defender."
The coach said he believed Bogut "found his stride" in Game 5 and that his play will carry over once the scene shifts to Oklahoma. If it doesn't — if the Thunder can get him back in early foul trouble, rather than Golden State getting counterpart Steven Adams in dutch with the refs, as happened Thursday — can reserves Marreese Speights and, to a lesser extent, Festus Ezeli offer the same kind of boost they did at home in Game 5 in a hostile environment? Can they hold Durant and Westbrook below 40 percent shooting again, and limit series-changing wing Andre Roberson (six points, six rebounds, three assists and two steals before fouling out after 34 minutes of work) and key sixth man Dion Waiters (a Game 5-low minus-17 in 27 scoreless minutes) again, or will OKC's stars and supporting cast more confidently knock down their looks in the comfort of their home gym?
I don't mean to damn the Warriors with faint praise after an impressive performance in a must-win game; Kerr's club certainly earned its right to keep breathing. Still, an awful lot had to go Golden State's way to stay alive, and getting it all right again in what was a house of horrors for them last week figures to be an exceptionally tall task.
2. Which Draymond Green will we see?
After two dismal outings in which he was completely flummoxed by the length and physicality of Oklahoma City in general, and Durant in particular, Green came out for Game 5 intent on making an impact by pushing even harder and bringing even more energy. Once again, though, he alternately looked like he was pressing or overly passive offensively in the early going, and all that energy boiled over after halftime.
Green fouled Durant on a 3-point attempt, demonstratively disagreed with referee Ken Mauer's call, and earned himself a technical foul, giving the Thunder a chance to cut a seven-point deficit down to just three on one possession less than one minute into the third quarter. Two trips later, Green came up empty on a wild runner, tossed his arms up in frustration at not earning a trip to the foul line on his drive and hesitated before getting back in transition ... which afforded Serge Ibaka enough time and space to get open for a baseline jumper that cut the deficit to one, leading Kerr to take a timeout to stop the bleeding and try to get Green out of the red.
Whether it was Kerr's magic words or just a refusal to let himself go out on a sour note in three straight games, Green returned with renewed fervor after the timeout. He came up with two big blocks at the rim on the next two Thunder possessions, and later hauled in a deep post from Bogut for an and-one finish that gave Golden State a three-point lead and fired Oracle — and, of course, Draymond himself — right the heck up:
Green finished with 11 points, 13 rebounds (including five on the offensive glass), four assists, four blocks, one steal and just two turnovers in 39 minutes. After the game, Kerr credited his All-Star power forward for how "he settled himself down and showed great poise and energy" after his third-quarter blow-up, though Green acknowledged that, despite managing to contribute in a number of ways, he still wasn't quite himself against an opponent whose size, strength and skill have proven tough for him to overcome.
"I mean, I think I was better tonight, but I still didn't do all the things I'm capable of doing," he said. "Shots, sometimes you can't control that. Sometimes you can't control certain stuff on the floor. But the one thing I can control is the way I go out there and fight and battle. That was my mindset tonight — I was coming to a fight, and that's it. I'm going to go out there and do that. If all else fails, I'm going to fight. That's kind of what I did, and that will be my mindset for the rest of the series."
Nobody doubts Green's tenacity and commitment to attacking his opposition. (Even when he [allegedly] doesn't intend to do it.) The question, though, is whether the All-NBA Second Team forward will be able to properly harness his unvarnished brand of intensity — "I approach this like it's life or death. It's not just a game to me. I love this. This is what I do." — or if he'll once again press so hard that he buckles, this time in a game during which the Warriors absolutely cannot afford to be without his services.
"We'd be lost without Draymond, I can tell you that," Kerr said during the Warriors' Friday shootaround. "We need his edge. We need his fire. Every once in a while, he spills over the top. He knows that. But we'll take it. He's got to be composed [Saturday] night, for sure, especially on the road. And I think we have to play a very poised, disciplined game. That means all of us, but our leaders have to show the way."
Green doesn't have to carry the Warriors on either end of the floor, but he has to animate and propel them on both. He's got to bring the right brand of energy and activity to embolden Golden State enough to scratch out one more win to give themselves a chance to close out back at home.
"This ain't our first time going on the road," he said after Game 5. "We know what it takes to win on the road, and we have to make sure that we stick to that. We have to go in there and follow the game plan, and we have to go in there and completely exceed their intensity level."
So much of what makes Green special is his ability to dance on the razor's edge, to let his passion fuel him without becoming consumed by the flame. He seemed to get closer to rediscovering that balance in the second half of Game 5. Can he carry it over on Saturday night, with the Warriors' season on the line?
3. Which lineups will carry the day?
Coming into this series, everybody knew just how devastating the Warriors' small-ball "Death Lineup" of Curry, Thompson, Green, Harrison Barnes and Andre Iguodala was. It had outscored opponents by 175 points in 185 shared regular- and postseason minutes, blitzing the opposition with shooting, ball-handling, playmaking and pipe-bursting pressure defense.
Then the conference finals started, and suddenly the Death Lineup didn't look so deadly anymore, because Billy Donovan showed that he had a killer lineup — Ibaka at center, Durant at power forward, Roberson and Waiters on the wing, Westbrook at point — that could play small-ball with a pair of near 7-footers up front, super-sized wingspans at every position, and speed to burn.
"It hasn't been working that well," Kerr said of his laid-low hammer lineup. "I still think it can work, but circumstances will dictate that each game. This team we're playing is very long, athletic, great rebounding team, and they're very skilled. So a lot of the advantages that we've had all season long playing that lineup maybe aren't quite there as much."
OKC's five-man wrecking crew absolutely annihilated the Warriors through the first four games of this series, outscoring Golden State by 49 points in 30 shared minutes. And then Game 5 started, and Bogut didn't get into foul trouble, and Kerr played most of the game with more traditional two-big sets.
When the game did go smaller, OKC's brand didn't pack quite the same punch, getting outscored by three points in 10 total minutes. And when Kerr needed to hang onto a late lead, he once again turned to the Death Lineup ... who produced 13 points in two minutes, the bulk of them coming at the line, and outscored the Thunder by three to seal the deal.
"I still believe in that lineup," Kerr said of his Death Lineup. "That's the lineup that closed the game [Thursday] night. But this opponent requires a lot of different looks and different lineups in order to beat them."
And in the most pivotal stretch of the game — the beginning of the fourth quarter, which began with OKC down just four — Kerr elected to sit all three of his All-Stars, as Curry, Thompson and Green watched a lineup led by Barnes, Iguodala and Shaun Livingston rip off eight straight points to put OKC permanently behind the 8-ball.
Small-ball with 7-footers, "real" small-ball, traditional two-big lineups, staggered-star units, all-bench crews: at different points in this series, we've seen all of it work, and all of it not. Numerous factors could contribute to success or failure in Game 6 — foul trouble, pursuit of 50/50 balls, a friendly bounce here, an unkind rim there — and even with so much riding on every possession, both coaches seem comfortable with the possibility that they'll have to upsize or downshift based on the breaks of the game.
"For us, it's got to be a total team collective effort," Donovan said Friday. "I thought last night they got great production from their bench. Their guys stepped up. Speights, knowing him so well, he gave them a huge boost in a very short period of time. Livingston did as well. They've got some really good minutes from their bench. I think throughout the course of the series, our bench has done a very, very good job as well. But I think in a game like this, going forward, I'd say that we need all of our guys to be ready and be able to contribute."
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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