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Away from the microphones late Saturday night, the Warriors were furious at themselves for blowing a game they could’ve won and definitely disappointed with the officiating for making sure of it.
But at the postgame podium, the Warriors were extremely calm and confident, too, in a way only the Warriors could pull off in this kind of moment.
Angry and armed with surprisingly compelling confidence — put that title on the documentary about the late stages of this long and rambunctious run.
Of course, a four-time champion is never going to go away meekly. That’s not how they won those titles or how they got to the second round just a few days ago. And that’s not how this night played out, even while the Warriors were losing Game 3 to Minnesota at Chase Center, which left them with a 2-1 deficit in this series.
The Warriors played without Stephen Curry for the second consecutive game and there’s no definitive word on when he might come back. But Curry was seen going through a very limited (no running or even jogging) light workout during the Warriors’ practice before the game — his first known basketball activities of any kind since he strained his hamstring in Game 1 four days earlier. Will he be in uniform for Game 6 on May 18 if the Warriors can extend this series that far by winning just once in the next two games? Maybe. Can the Warriors actually buy him that time — starting with Monday’s chance to avoid a 3-1 deficit? Maybe.
Actually, they made it quite clear that they feel pretty good about it.
“We’re right there,” Steve Kerr said after the game. “We feel great about our chances. This is what the playoffs are all about. There’s these emotional swings and momentum shifts and we’ve just got to take tomorrow off and get the guys refreshed, recharged and come back in Monday and tee it up again. …
“The formula looks good. We’ll have some adjustments to make. But I like the matchup. I like what we’re doing.”
The formula the Warriors deployed on Saturday wasn’t too complicated: Get the ball to Jimmy Butler and let him attack Minnesota’s defense as much and as successfully as possible. He’s 35 years old, he hasn’t really played that way since he joined the Warriors in February (or this season at all), but in a Curry-less game, the Warriors would’ve been drawing dead without Playoff Jimmy.
And Butler, who had averaged 13.3 shot attempts in the playoffs this season before Saturday, shot it 26 times in this game and made 12, on his way to 33 points in 43 grueling minutes flying right into the teeth of the Timberwolves’ very long, very athletic defense.
“He willed us all game,” Buddy Hield said of Butler. “He willed us all game.”
It still wasn’t enough. Butler seemed to wear down at the end — he was only 1-for-7 in the fourth quarter, frequently getting walled off at the rim. It would be a lot to ask Butler to keep doing this for as long as Curry is out. It will be almost impossible if he’s doing this all alone, night after night.
“Man, Jimmy was incredible,” Kerr said. “He really controlled the game for us and put us in a position to win and we just couldn’t close it out. But he was brilliant all night.”
But the brightest sign for the Warriors was that there actually was one guy running alongside Butler all night. Jonathan Kuminga, who had been mostly out of the rotation this postseason, subbed in quickly on Saturday and played 36 fantastic minutes, totaling 30 points with 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocked shots — and was a team-best +5.
And after weeks of watching Kuminga look thoroughly unsuited to play with Butler, the two seemed to find something together in this game — they worked with each other and off of each other. In their almost 30 minutes of court time together, the Warriors were +9. That means in the other 18 minutes (with just Butler or just Kuminga or neither on the court), the Warriors were -14.
“Like I tell everybody, me and him can thrive together,” Butler said. “I know how to space the floor. I can tell him, ‘Hey, when I have the ball, you go here and you do this.’ We talk, we listen to one another, and then he has an incredible game like tonight, and he did so many good things out there on the floor. I know that he’s going to be a huge part of us winning on Monday.”
Big problem for the Warriors: Nobody else was able to get up to speed offensively. Hield struggled to even get off a shot until the second half — symptomatic of the Warriors’ failing to make a 3-pointer in the entire first half. With the Timberwolves’ defense tilted to Butler and Hield, Brandin Podziemski was given plenty of space to maneuver but went 1-for-10 and looked more and more exasperated as the game went on. And Draymond Green struggled through a 2-point, 2-rebound, 5-assist night — and fouled out after playing just 29 minutes.
Still, the Warriors had a two-point lead at halftime, a four-point lead after three quarters, and an 82-77 lead with 8:16 left in the game. They were playing very strong, balanced defense. But Draymond picked up his fourth foul midway through the third quarter on a blocking call that the Warriors were sure would be reversed after their challenge — yet the foul was upheld.
Then he got No. 5 in the fourth when Minnesota challenged a called foul on Julius Randle when the replay showed Draymond tugging Randle’s jersey. Draymond fouled out 18 seconds later challenging a shot at the rim — which the Warriors couldn’t challenge because they lost the earlier one.
Let’s just say that a few Warriors people were not thrilled with that series of events. It’s no guarantee that Draymond — who was -5 in the game — would’ve changed the game if he’d played more than six minutes in the fourth. But the result was that Edwards had a clearer floor and he wrapped up the game with 13 points in the quarter.
“I just know that everything just didn’t go our way today and that’s how the game is.” Hield said. “We don’t want no excuses. … (But) we didn’t get calls. Jimmy got fouled a couple times at the rim (that weren’t called). It is what it is. That’s the fun part about it. Just got to figure it out, and we’re down 2-1, we just got to weather the storm.”
The Warriors are sounding like they think they’ve taken the best the Timberwolves are going to throw at them. Yes, the Warriors are obviously in some trouble. They have to win Monday. They’ve got to get this series to six games to give Curry his best chance to win it for them. So they were angry at themselves for not finishing off a game that was right there for them to win. But they also know they’ve got Butler ready to do more. They’ve got Kuminga jumping out of the building. And they really want to show us how they’ll figure it all out.