For the first time since 1977, the Warriors had made the playoffs three years in a row, and they seemed poised to not only fulfill Lacob’s goal of making the Western Conference Finals but even potentially win the whole enchilada for the first time in four decades. They’d finished the regular season with the 10th-best record in NBA history and recorded the highest year-on-year improvement (plus-16) of any 50-win team in league history, but such accomplishments would feel hollow if they didn’t get within reach of a championship.
First up were the upstart New Orleans Pelicans, led by former No. 1 overall pick Anthony Davis, a mammoth University of Kentucky star who, despite being just 21, had ravaged opposing NBA power forwards and centers for three years. He’d led the league in blocks two years in a row while averaging 24 points and 10 rebounds. Complementing him was a trio of capable guards in Tyreke Evans, Eric Gordon, and Jrue Holiday. Evans had beaten out Stephen Curry for Rookie of the Year honors back in 2010 and was the team’s second-leading scorer at 16 a night, while Gordon (13.4 points per game) and Holiday (14.8) were legit threats from the perimeter. And with Ryan Anderson, a 6-foot-10 backup power forward who could stretch the floor and knock down threes like a wing, the Pelicans had the deep-threat scorers to rain down enough shots to make any game tighter than it deserved to be. New Orleans even handed Golden State its 15th and final loss of the regular season, a 103–100 nail-biter on April 7 wherein only two Warriors scored in double digits and Davis dominated with 29 points, 10 boards, four blocks, and no turnovers.
Nonetheless, Golden State swept New Orleans out of the playoffs in a week’s time. After two pedestrian wins at Oracle, the Warriors were down by 20 heading into the fourth quarter of Game 3 in the Crescent City. They not only forced overtime but won, 123–119, as Curry finished with 40 points and nine assists; was the game’s high scorer in the third quarter, fourth quarter, and overtime; and dropped two threes in the final 12 seconds of regulation to force the extra frame. It was the first time in franchise history that Golden State won a game after being down by at least 20 points entering the fourth; its previous record in such instances was 0-358.
Sure, the Pelicans were not the staunchest competition, but it was the kind of game that gave the Warriors an air of inevitability. They were truly never out of a game, not when they were down 17 points with six minutes to play, not ever. And behind 39 points and nine assists from Curry in Game 4, the Warriors closed out the series with a 109–98 win to partake in seven full days of rest before meeting their next opponent.
• • •
The Memphis Grizzlies would be a far tougher test for Golden State in the second round. They were constructed more in the mold of a traditional NBA squad. They shot the second-fewest threes per game and didn’t have a 20-point scorer on their roster. But they were balanced—five players averaged double-digit scoring in the regular season—and boasted the third-best defense in the league, allowing just 102.2 points per 100 possessions. That was almost as good as the Warriors, but Memphis’s offense, unlike Golden State’s, thrived at a grinding pace, the fifth-slowest of any NBA team. The Grizzlies could break the Warriors’ reliance on rhythm and reduce the game from one of back-and-forth transition and fast breaks to staid possessions that lived and died in the halfcourt. To break through, Golden State would have to either dictate pace or adapt on the fly to beat Memphis at its own game, whichever seemed more effective in the moment.
The Warriors won Game 1, 101–86, but the contest was far more competitive than a typical 15-point coasting. Curry’s 22 points topped all players, even though Golden State shot better than 50 percent from the field and 46 percent on threes. The Grizzlies dictated the pace, but their execution was lacking on both ends of the court.
In Game 2, Memphis flipped the script and shocked Golden State with a 97–90 win that was more in keeping with their team style. No Warrior topped 20 points on the night as Golden State shot just 42 percent overall and a measly 23 percent on threes. Twenty turnovers led to 22 points for the Grizzlies. After the game, the mood inside the Warriors’ locker room felt as if a highly touted heavyweight had hit the canvas for the first time. “Everybody expecting us to go undefeated in the playoffs, no one expects us to lose a game at home,” said a somewhat sarcastic Draymond Green outside his locker, “and now the whole world is collapsed and the Bay Area’s just been hit by an earthquake.” Green was being cheeky, but the shock inside Oracle was real.
Kerr felt the team lost its poise, and 20 turnovers was beyond unacceptable. “They deserved to win,” Kerr said of Memphis after the loss. “They kicked our butts.”
But the real butt-kicking came three days later, when Memphis rolled to a 99–89 win. After the Grizzlies took a 55–39 lead into halftime, the Warriors had to claw back all night long and fell decisively short. Their shooting percentages were basically a carbon copy from Game 2, and Curry scored a miserable 23 points on 21 shots. The Grizzlies grabbed more rebounds, committed fewer turnovers, and even outassisted the Warriors. It was a complete breakdown in all facets for Golden State. The Memphis defense, led by Tony Allen, Zach Randolph, and Marc Gasol, was swarming and relentless. The Warriors were now, somewhat inexplicably, down in the series, and Kerr had to crack the Grizzlies’ defensive code before the Warriors’ hole deepened.
Assistant coach Ron Adams—the lead architect of the Warriors’ defense and a man once described as “a caricature of the coach-as-intellectual, a thinker whose academic pursuits inform his hoops”—had an idea. Allen, even at 6-foot-4, was the Grizzlies’ best one-on-one defender. Neutralize him—or better yet, figure a way to force him to the bench— and that would free up the Warriors’ offense. Adams’s suggestion to Kerr was to take 7-foot center Andrew Bogut and assign him to defend Allen. More specifically, Bogut would engage only should Allen come into the lane. As long as Allen stayed along the perimeter, he could take all the tantalizing, wide-open shots he wanted.
Why might this defensive cross-match work for Golden State? Because Allen had been terrible on jumpers all season (shooting just 32 percent) and was downright atrocious on threes in his playoff career—making barely 10 percent of such shots across more than 100 postseason games. If the Warriors were going to lose Game 4, they were going to force Allen’s jumper to beat them, all while Bogut was free to help defend other players traversing the interior. The more shots Allen missed, the more pressure head coach Dave Joerger would feel to remove his best lockdown defender from the game. With Allen exiled, the Warriors could operate in space, get prime looks on threes, and have a better chance of beating the Grizzlies’ bigs (Randolph and Gasol) down low.
The strategy worked to perfection. With Bogut barely noticing Allen on the perimeter, the Grizzlies wing launched up three three-pointers in the first quarter—more than he had in any game through the entire season—and clanked all of them. Meanwhile, with room to operate, Curry punched in 21 points and four assists as the Warriors led by 17 at halftime.
Allen was barely visible in the second half, missing all three of his shots early in the third quarter. Not five minutes had elapsed when Joerger benched him for almost the entire rest of the game, save the last 10 seconds of the third. In the end, despite 21 turnovers and getting outrebounded (49–45) and outassisted (24–22), the Warriors rolled to a 101–84 win. After combining for 12 threes on 52 attempts in the previous two games, Golden State sank 14 of 33 long-distance shots (42.4 percent). Allen’s absence was obvious all around.
“You probably don’t see the opposing team’s center playing your starting shooting guard very often,” said Joerger the next day, adding that Allen was experiencing hamstring pain and could potentially sit out Game 5 and beyond. Now, Allen had sat out the last two weeks of the regular season with a strained hammy but returned to play in every playoff game thus far and looked fine physically in Game 4, at least enough so that Joerger never mentioned any injury recurrence in his postgame comments with the media. Still, Allen was almost certainly hurt to some extent, because it’s inconceivable the Grizzlies would’ve dispensed with the services of their best wing defender due to one little bit of defensive maneuvering by Golden State. Nevertheless, the sequence of events was odd and ultimately disadvantageous for Memphis.
Just before tipoff of Game 5 at Oracle Arena, Allen was officially scrapped from the lineup and the Warriors reeled off a 98–78 victory. The game’s pace was agonizingly slow by Golden State standards—just 87 possessions on the night—but the Warriors adapted by raining down threes on Memphis, making 14 of 30 (46.7 percent) of them. When the Grizzlies raced out to a double-digit advantage with less than two minutes remaining in the first quarter, the Warriors ripped an 11–0 run to inch ahead, 26–25. The Grizzlies never led again.
Kerr called that first quarter–ending run a “miracle.” He didn’t like seeing his team so anxious in the opening minutes. Regardless, the Warriors outscored the Grizzlies in every quarter. With a chance to close out the series in Memphis, Kerr had just one message for the team. “You don’t mess around,” he told them. “You get it done.”
It wasn’t another 20-point blowout, but the Warriors did what they needed to in Game 6, finishing off the Grizzlies, 108–95, to advance to their first Western Conference Finals since 1976. Allen was back in Memphis’s starting lineup but pulled before six minutes had elapsed, his mobility clearly limited, although Bogut was once again ignoring him on the perimeter, and in an elimination game, the Grizzlies simply couldn’t afford to play four-on-five on offense. Golden State’s defense allowed just 37 percent shooting and 25 percent on threes.
Curry’s 32 points were more than enough for the Warriors. His 26 threes in the series? One more than all of the Grizzlies combined.
It was perhaps a more formidable challenge than expected, but the Warriors headed home with three straight wins over an opponent that forced them to adapt in real time. Kerr could see the series slipping away and that something drastic was needed. And for an assistant like Ron Adams to receive such public credit was remarkable. More tweaks and adjustments would come in the near future, but a cohesive workplace culture that encouraged all voices along the chain of command to speak up had saved the Warriors’ season.
Soon enough, it would do so again.
• • •
The basketball gods, in their infinite wisdom, sent the Houston Rockets to the conference finals rather than the Los Angeles Clippers, who had ridden the league’s most efficient offense (112.4 points per 100 possessions) to 56 wins. The Clippers were tops in two-point field-goal percentage and third in both three-point efficiency and assists, all while committing the second-fewest turnovers. As ranked by True Shooting Percentage, which accounts for the value of three-pointers and free throws in its determination, the Warriors (57.1 percent) and Clippers (56.5 percent) were first and second overall. Had they been matched up against each other just a year after all the fireworks of the 2014 playoffs, the hype would’ve been borderline unbearable.
Both the Rockets and the Clippers finished the season with a 56-26 record. The Rockets earned the No. 2 seed by virtue of winning the Southwest Division, their first division title in 21 years. But it was the Clippers who raced out to a 3–1 series lead with one convincing win after another—by 16, 25, and then 33 points in Game 4. The Rockets—having already lost Patrick Beverley (a top-shelf defender) and Donatas Motiejunas (a low-post scoring threat) for the year and relying on the superlative play of MVP candidate James Harden—won the next two to force a decisive Game 7.
And despite heroics from Chris Paul (26 points and 10 assists), Blake Griffin (27 points and 11 rebounds), and DeAndre Jordan (16 points and 17 rebounds), the Clippers fell short, 113–100, when it mattered most. Harden was electric, with 31 points and eight assists, but the unlikely three-point shooting of Josh Smith (31.6 percent in the regular season) and Trevor Ariza (35 percent) torpedoed the Clippers’ hopes. Ariza made 13 of 26 threes over the final three games of the series, including 6 of 12 in Game 7 and two in the pivotal fourth quarter. Down by 20 late, Los Angeles trimmed the lead to eight before Ariza’s three with 56 seconds left sealed the win. Smith also shot 50 percent on threes (7-for-14) over those three Houston wins to close out the series, and the Clippers were again left wondering when they would advance to the first conference finals in franchise history.
But the Clippers’ loss was the Warriors’ gain, as Golden State was now matched up against a team whose health was far less than 100 percent and that had just expended a massive amount of energy to stave off a tough opponent in seven games. With only one full rest day, the Rockets traveled to Oakland while the Warriors had three full days at home to recharge after the grueling Memphis series.
And these Rockets were, in many ways, kindred spirits. As constructed by general manager Daryl Morey, the cofounder of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, they were the living embodiment of the modern basketball analytics movement that preached shots at the rim (because they’re high-percentage) and threes (because they’re worth more than twos) above all other offensive actions. According to SportVU data, threes composed 39.4 percent of their regular-season shots compared to 30.9 percent for Golden State, and shots 10 feet or closer to the rim totaled 48.4 percent of all their field-goal attempts, whereas that number was 43.3 percent for the Warriors. That means nearly 88 percent of all their shots were either up close or deep for three—an astoundingly high percentage, but that was Morey’s way.
While the Rockets resembled the Warriors on analytic steroids, where they fell short was in their efficiency. On the fourth-most three-point attempts per game, Golden State led the league in percentage (39.8 percent). And though Houston led all teams in three-point attempts, they were only 14th-best in converting them (34.8 percent). The Rockets were still making more threes per game than the Warriors based on volume (11.4 to 10.8), but more misses meant more chances for defensive rebounds—Golden State ranked No. 4 in that category—and more chances to score on the fast break, where, of course, the Warriors ranked No. 1 at 20.9 points per game.
Against a Rockets team that ranked eighth in Defensive Rating (103.4 points allowed per 100 possessions) but was shorthanded because of injuries and slammed with fatigue, the Warriors were confident about their chances.
Right away, it was clear the Rockets had not come to Oakland simply to get pushed around by the top seed. After a quarter and a half of Game 1, the visitors led by 16 points, but the Warriors reeled off a 25–6 run over the next six minutes—punctuated by a 20-foot Curry buzzer-beater—to command a three-point halftime lead.
Shaun Livingston scored 18 points that night, including 10 during the critical second-quarter comeback, which happened once Kerr went to a modified version of his “small-ball” lineup, giving Iguodala’s usual spot to Livingston, who’s an inch taller. “When we go small,” the 6-foot-7 backup point guard said after the game, “it’s not necessarily small.” That alignment put Green at center, and neither the towering Dwight Howard (who had a wonky left knee by that point) nor his backup, Clint Capela, could contain him. Green finished with 13 points, 12 rebounds, and a team-high eight assists. Only the play of James Harden and Josh Smith (10 and eight points in the fourth quarter, respectively) kept the game close, but a late 7–0 run by Curry, who finished with 34 points, helped the Warriors pull away, 110–106.
Game 2 looked as if it should’ve been a Warriors blowout, especially to look blindly at select box score stats after the game: Golden State had 31 assists, tied Houston in rebounding (39), and shot 53.2 percent from the field. What would’ve concerned the Warriors was that Harden (38 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists) and Howard (19 points and 17 rebounds) connected on 21 of their 32 shots (65.6 percent).
But the Rockets’ problem was that no one else contributed close to that kind of efficiency. Trevor Ariza and Josh Smith combined for 8-of-25 shooting and just 17 points. Golden State won the battle of the bench scoring, 20–15, while Bogut chipped in five blocks. That foundation of depth and defense made all the difference in this one. Curry scored his customary 33 points and Harden flubbed the final possession with the ball in his hands as the buzzer sounded on a thrilling 99–98 Warriors win. Whatever Houston tried, Golden State thwarted.
Golden State won a Game 3 laugher in Houston, 110–85, behind Curry’s 40 points on 19 shots. The Rockets, who so often lived by the three-pointer, died by it on this night, missing 20 of 25 shots from deep. They could apply no defensive pressure, as the Warriors committed just one turnover in the first half, the first time they had one turnover or fewer in any half of basketball since December 2012. And with the win, they were now virtually assured of making the NBA Finals, since 116 teams in league history had gone up 3–0 in a best-of-seven series and not one had ever blown it. With just two losses across 13 postseason games, the Warriors were now sporting a better winning percentage in the playoffs (.846) than in the regular season (.817).
Naturally, they dropped Game 4. There figured to be one game in this series where the Rockets played to the level that had knocked off the Clippers in such stunning fashion, and this was it. Even as Curry, Thompson, and Green all topped 20 points, Harden blew up for 45 points on just 22 shots. Ariza and Smith combined for 37 points and the Rockets finally got the secondary contributions they needed for a 128–115 win.
More concerning for the Warriors than the loss was that Curry took a nasty spill in the second quarter with the Rockets ahead by 19. The MVP bit on a pump fake by Ariza and flew up in the air and then down on his head and neck. He returned to play most of the second, but it was a heart-stopping moment. Curry remained in the locker room after halftime with Bob Myers, the team’s medical staff, and even his father, Dell, who had maneuvered his way from the stands. And though Curry returned to the floor midway through the third and played the final 18 minutes of the game, the Rockets’ cushion proved insurmountable. After the game, Curry said it was the scariest fall he had ever experienced in a game but that he’d be fine: “You just want to gather yourself, regroup, and trust the process.”
Now the series shifted to Oakland for what felt like a coronation.
• • •
It hadn’t been five minutes since she left the Oracle Arena court that Riley Curry, all of two years old, went back into the Warriors’ sparsely occupied family room. Most all other friends and loved ones were still on the court celebrating, taking selfies, and high-fiving with yellow confetti ribbon in their hair, but Riley had grandpa Dell, whose 16 years in the NBA educated him on how to exit a raucous court with ease, to help her back to quieter spaces.
As he carried his granddaughter, Dell gave Riley a kiss on the cheek and smiled. It was the face of not only a grandfather’s love but the pride that comes with watching your eldest son lead a team that was now within reach of a championship.
Indeed, it was Steph, as always, who helped the Warriors secure a complete and clinical win, 104–90. Curry was everything the Warriors needed him to be, with 26 points, eight rebounds, six assists, and five steals—an inspiring performance after his nasty spill in Game 4. That, though, was a fast-fading memory. In the here and now, the Warriors were going to the NBA Finals.
“I always think of Pat Riley’s great quote: ‘When you’re coaching in the NBA, there’s winning and there’s misery,’ ” Steve Kerr said after the win. “He’s right. Winning feels like a relief more than anything most of the time. But to get to the Finals, first time in 40 years for the Warriors, it’s more than relief. It’s joy. Our players are feeling it.”
Kerr was dead-on. The mood inside the locker room was gleeful and then focused. There was music, then there wasn’t. Smiles were abundant but no one acted overly exuberant. Curry was stunned to see Harden’s turnover total (12) when a reporter handed him the box score. Green plugged his Snapchat account. Everyone took their time getting dressed. The sense of accomplishment was palpable, insofar as one can assess such moods, but there was no doubt the ultimate goal remained unfinished. “Very proud and happy with how we played tonight,” Curry said. “We’ve got to take a week off to get ready and get our minds right and our game plan right.”
The Warriors had bested the Rockets in every phase. Dwight Howard played center for 42 minutes yet Golden State won the rebounding battle by a 59–39 margin. The Warriors had more fast-break points (26–20), points in the paint (50–34), and second-chance points (18–8). Andrew Bogut had one of his funkiest stat lines in years: zero points on 0-for-1 shooting, 14 rebounds, and two blocks in 19 minutes. Even Harrison Barnes, who was averaging only 10 points in the playoffs, finished with 24, his best output in two months.
The only cause for concern was when Klay Thompson, whose 15 first-half points led all scorers, was kneed in the head in the fourth quarter, when the Warriors two-guard faked a shot and Trevor Ariza bit hard. Despite feeling concussionlike symptoms after the game, he would recover in time for the Finals. Besides, Golden State now had several days to heal for the biggest test any of them had faced in their lives.
After the win, holding Riley in his arms once again as he had after Game 1, Curry gave his most reflective comments yet on how this team had moved from Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr.
“It’s been a tough summer,” Curry said. “It’s been well-documented we came off a seven-game series against the Clippers and it was a shock to have a coaching change, but I assessed it as kind of two separate decisions. I didn’t agree with the first one, but you’ve got to make the right hire, and I think they did that. Obviously, they did that. We hit the ground running in training camp with his philosophy of ball movement, player movement, obviously keeping the defense that we’ve established the last two years the same and taking it to another level. [Kerr] is a humble guy that understands he took over a talented team, and he’s very fortunate that we’ve had some experiences under our belt and we can—we’re not rebuilding or anything, so we’re poised to have a great season, and I think we’ve exceeded a lot of people’s expectations.
“But this is something that, as players, we’ve been eyeing, and it’s nice to have ourselves where we are: four wins away from a championship.”
All they had to do was take down the best basketball player in the world.
• • •
The Cleveland Cavaliers, as they stood on the morning of June 4, 2015, were a force for any team to reckon with, no matter how good they thought they were. LeBron James was playing in his fifth consecutive Finals and had been the Cavs’ shining star through six weeks of playoff hoops, averaging 27.6 points, 10.6 rebounds, 8.3 assists, 1.8 steals, and 1.3 blocks over 14 games.
But that production had come at a price, as James was launching up 25 shots per game, six more than in the regular season, and making just 42.8 percent, a decrease of six percentage points. His three-point shooting, too, had cratered, falling from 35.4 to 17.6 percent. He was shouldering a mammoth load, but advancing this deep into the playoffs was contingent on winning games by any means necessary. If that meant chucking up 40 shots to get 35 points and you outscored the other team by one, so be it.
All season long, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, his fellow musketeers, both three-time All-Stars, were ready to follow James’s example. Aside from missing two games in the Eastern Conference Finals with a tendinitis flare-up in his knee, Irving had been spectacular through three rounds, averaging 18.7 points and a whopping 48.1 percent on threes. Love, meanwhile, had been knocked out for the season back in the first round against Boston, when his left shoulder was wrenched from its socket by Celtics center Kelly Olynyk as the two tussled for a loose ball. Three days later, Love had surgery that would sideline him for at least four months. He’d struggled mightily in his first season in Cleveland and his numbers across the board fell precipitously, but Love looked better in those first three games against Boston—all wins for the Cavs—as he averaged 18 points, nine boards, and 47 percent on threes.
And yet, without their starting power forward, the Cavs soldiered on through a slate of would-be contenders. After sweeping Boston, they knocked off Chicago in six games before sweeping the 60-win, top-seeded Atlanta Hawks in a dominant display of force. In those four games alone, James fell a fraction of an assist shy of averaging a triple-double: 30.3 points, 11 rebounds, 9.3 assists. It had been 51 years since the city of Cleveland had won any kind of professional sports championship, and James was playing at a level where you believed anything was possible.
Beat Golden State four times out of seven? Unlikely, especially without Love, but surely possible.
Meanwhile, the Warriors used the rest days following the Western Conference Finals to heal up after their accumulation of bumps and bruises. Between Curry falling on his head in Game 4 and Thompson getting a knee to the noggin in Game 5—both plays courtesy of Houston’s Trevor Ariza—Golden State had its share of injury scares, but was no worse for wear as the Finals approached. As someone who could boast five fingers’ worth of championship rings, Kerr knew how to get his team focused and prepared. There wasn’t much he could do to quell their nervousness, their frenetic anticipation of a new experience, but the trick was to keep them grounded in the moment, to not let them get too far ahead with their thoughts and actions. You don’t think about Game 2 until you win Game 1, and so on. Kerr told stories from his title-winning days in Chicago and San Antonio, and he asked Luke Walton to share a few from the two years he won titles with the Lakers. “Once you get out on the floor, you just start playing, and everything returns to normal,” Kerr said the day before Game 1. “It’s still just a basketball game, but you’ve got to get to that point, and the best way to do that is to try to ignore the chaos as much as you can.” As he told his team in the locker room just moments before tipoff, “When we go out there, we’re gonna be loose. We’re gonna let it fly. We’re gonna have some fun. We’ve earned this trip and every second of this should be enjoyable.”
With the Cavs in their first Finals in eight years and the Warriors a couple of generations removed from their previous trip, both teams looked eager to make a good showing early in Game 1.
The Cavs raced out to a 14-point lead that the Warriors were able to shave to three by halftime. In the waning seconds of the third quarter, Iguodala stole the ball from James and raced the other way for a seam to tie the game, 73–73, heading to the fourth. “He’s not stronger than LeBron,” Kerr said after the game, “but he is very strong. He may not have the same weight—you know, he’s giving up 50 pounds or so—but Andre knows what he’s doing.” Iguodala later said that the adrenaline of guarding James in the Finals was so pressure-filled that you couldn’t absorb it. It reminded him of the kind of carefree balling a child might enjoy. “When you get into a flow, as a kid, you play in socks,” he said. “You play in socks all the time in your room, so you go back to those days and just playing ball.”
And when Curry, who finished with a team-high 26 points, pulled up from 20 feet and coolly sank a jumper with 53 seconds left to give Golden State a 98–96 lead, it looked as if that would be enough. But Timofey Mozgov’s two free throws with 32 seconds left tied the game up. At the other end, Curry had his driving layup blocked from behind by Kyrie Irving. Both James and Iman Shumpert had chances in the final six seconds to win the game but neither converted.
Cleveland’s fortunes took an irrevocable nosedive with 2:20 left in the overtime as Irving, who not only had 23 points and six assists but defended Curry marvelously all night, slipped while driving to the rim and awkwardly twisted the same left knee that had forced him to sit out a couple of conference finals games against Atlanta. The Warriors, already up by four, came down the court and Barnes sank a left-corner three to push the lead to seven. Irving limped off to the locker room, the Cavs didn’t score at all until there was less than 10 seconds to play, and the Warriors secured a 108–100 win.
An MRI the next morning confirmed that Irving had a fractured kneecap. His playoffs were over. With him and Love out, Cleveland was without its second- and third-best players for the remainder of the Finals. In Irving’s stead, the new starter was Matthew Dellavedova, an Australian import who was in his second NBA season and had played college ball in the Bay Area, 10 miles east of Oakland at St. Mary’s. It meant a precipitous dropoff from Irving’s production—the backup averaged just five points and three assists in the regular season—but the Cavs had no choice. That Dellavedova had also developed a reputation as something of a dirty player due to a couple of high-profile incidents in the Eastern Conference Finals was also something Coach Blatt had to live with.
Even with Irving playing most of Game 1, the Warriors were able to execute their game plan. The Cavs had held their playoff opponents to just 28.1 percent on threes, but Kerr’s squad nailed 10 of 27 (37 percent) from long range. They outrebounded Cleveland, 48–45, and committed only 12 turnovers. Their offense wasn’t dynamic—just 24 assists on 39 shots in 53 minutes—but a Finals win was a Finals win. James finished with 44 points but needed 38 shots to get there; Golden State would take that every time.
Still, overtime games often play out as toss-ups, and in Game 2, the coin flipped the other way. This time, the Cavs were in control late, up by 11 with 3:15 to go, until the Warriors started clawing back. With 10 seconds left, Curry, who had missed 14 of 18 shots on the night to that point, was able to split LeBron James and Tristan Thompson at the top of the key and drive for an uncontested finger roll to tie the game at 87 and force another overtime ending.
But Curry’s miserable night only continued in the extra frame, as he missed all four shot attempts, the final one coming with seven seconds left and the Warriors down by one. The 19-footer might’ve won the game but—due to Dellavedova’s waving hands—the shot airballed right into James’s arms beyond the basket.
Cleveland prevailed, 95–93, as LeBron James’s triple-double of 39 points, 16 rebounds, and 11 assists—all other Cavs tallied three assists total—was just enough. “It’s not cute at all,” James said of Cleveland’s slow-paced play. “If you’re looking for us to play sexy, cute basketball, then that’s not us. That’s not us right now. Everything is tough. . . . And for us to win a Finals game shooting 32 percent from the field, it’s just a testament of how gritty we can be.”
Klay Thompson led the Warriors with 34 points, albeit on an inefficient 28 shots. Curry missed 13 of 15 three-point attempts, more than any player had ever missed in an NBA Finals contest, breaking John Starks’s record of 11 set during Game 7 in 1994. “Sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way,” Kerr said of his struggling superstar. “It doesn’t go in, it’s fine. You keep playing. I’ve seen it with everybody. I’ve seen it with Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan. It doesn’t matter who you are. Nobody is immune from a tough night.” Kerr himself only had to think back to the 1988 Final Four—when 10 of his own threes didn’t fall versus Oklahoma—but he was certain Curry’s shot would return.
The problem was that few other Warriors were stepping up; the team had little focus and no energy. In Game 3 at Cleveland—for which Joe Lacob had the entire Warriors front office staff flown out—Golden State scored just 55 points through three quarters and trailed by 17 headed to the fourth. Curry then blew up for 17 points in the final frame, making the final margin much closer than it seemed. “I’ve never seen someone that can shoot the ball off the dribble like himself, ever,” said James after the game.
As clutch as Curry was by game’s end, James was scintillating from start to finish. His 40 points, 12 rebounds, and eight assists were the ingredients of utter dominance, and his two steals off Curry in the final minute helped secure the 96–91 win.
The Warriors had been down 2–1 to Memphis in the conference semifinals, but this was a far more pressing proposition. The Cavs were dominating the pace and James was operating on a whole other plane of basketball existence. Though barely shooting 40 percent from the field, James was averaging 41 points, 12 rebounds, and eight assists through three Finals games. He was making threes at a 35 percent clip and drawing contact at will, taking 13.3 free throws per game. (As a team, the Warriors were averaging 19.7 free throws against the Cavs.)
Golden State’s poor shooting was not helping any—Harrison Barnes’s 0-for-8 goose egg in Game 3 was one example—and would likely improve, given enough time, but they were doomed if they couldn’t slow James down.
When asked to assess the pressure on his team on a scale from 1 to 10, Kerr smiled. “The pressure is like a 5.13,” he said. “I don’t know. We’re in the NBA Finals. There’s pressure for everybody.”
“You get to write the superlatives,” he added, “and we get to try to figure out how to slow them down.”
• • •
The night before Game 4, Nick U’Ren was in his hotel room in downtown Cleveland, scrolling through old video clips, when he found a way to save Golden State’s season.
LeBron James’s transcendent play had been effective through three games not just in the counting stats he was putting up but in the way the Cavs’ offense had taken the Warriors’ defense out of its rhythm. The game ground to a halt whenever Blatt’s team fed James for one post-up and iso after another. The Warriors had little chance to force turnovers, to get out in transition, and score on the fast break, but this series was not going to be won by whoever gathered the most rebounds or accumulated more assists.
What mattered more than anything was stopping LeBron James.
And that’s why U’Ren was looking at video. Ever since he graduated in 2009 from the University of San Diego, where he’d been the men’s basketball team manager, and was hired in Phoenix by Kerr (then the Suns’ general manager) as an intern, U’Ren had made his NBA life about video. Back then, before SportVU took the NBA by storm, the video tagging process was painstaking and meticulous. U’Ren had to laboriously separate game footage—offense here, defense there—and manually tag all of the relevant actions occurring in the video. Only then was it usable for the front office or coaching staff.
Before he left as GM, Kerr ensured that U’Ren was put on the staff full-time. He was still with the Suns four years later when Kerr landed in Oakland, and the new Warriors coach hired U’Ren as a special assistant. He’d handle video, of course, but also things like Kerr’s daily schedule and music playlists for practice. He’d work with Bruce Fraser during Curry’s end-of-practice drills. Kerr liked having positive people around who worked hard but could also laugh and not take everything seriously. Kerr half-jokingly dubbed U’Ren his “chief of staff” and encouraged him to speak up if he felt he could contribute.
Now, here was U’Ren scanning video of the 2014 Finals, when Kerr’s mentor, San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich, had made a startling lineup switch that changed his own team’s fortunes. With the series tied at a game apiece, Popovich sensed his team needed to get back to basics: passing, defense, and just being smarter. He moved center Tiago Splitter, who had started 50 regular-season games and 18 of 20 in the playoffs, to the bench in favor of 32-year-old journeyman Boris Diaw, who had started just 24 games and none in the postseason. The Spurs won the next three games by 19, 21, and 17 points to win yet another championship. James’s numbers across the board went down. Diaw nearly posted a triple-double in Game 4 and became a folk hero after the series. Popovich dubbed the strategy “medium ball.” Splitter had three inches on the 6-foot-8 Diaw, but the Spurs’ passing and defense kicked up to another level. James said then it was playing against “four point guards basically on the floor at once.”
But the Warriors’ situation—being down by a game instead of evened up—was worse, and what U’Ren proposed in his late-night call to assistant coach Luke Walton was far more drastic than swapping one big for another. He thought Kerr should consider benching 7-foot center Andrew Bogut in favor of starting 6-foot-6 wing Andre Iguodala. Bumping Bogut to the second unit might mean taking a hit on grabbing rebounds and protecting the rim, but Iguodala was an elite defender who could shadow James’s every move. That meant the 6-foot-7 Draymond Green would act as the de facto center and defend Timofey Mozgov while 6-foot-8 Harrison Barnes would draw power forward Tristan Thompson. Walton was on board and wanted Kerr to think it over as soon as he awoke. He texted him at 3:00 a.m.
The next morning, over breakfast, the tactic was debated inside and out. Of course, it wasn’t a lineup that was entirely foreign to the Warriors. During the regular season, this lineup of Curry-Thompson-Barnes-Iguodala-Green had played together for 102 minutes spread out over 37 games. It was Kerr’s fifth-most-used lineup of the season and had outscored opponents by 21.8 points per 100 possessions, an excellent Net Rating in any regard but far from Golden State’s most efficient five-man assemblage. And for this lineup to work, Iguodala’s defense on James needed to be heroic.
Kerr gave the move his blessing. Beyond the belief that Iguodala could keep James in check, the coach thought it would help space the floor, open up passing lanes, maybe light a spark under a team that had looked downright gloomy at times. Kerr wouldn’t fess up to the change when asked about any lineup tweaks before the game. It was only a few minutes before tipoff, when league rules mandate the starting lineups be submitted, that the move was made public. Golden State’s entire year rested on this decision. “If this doesn’t work, it’s your fault,” Kerr joked with U’Ren before the game. “And if it works, I’m taking the credit.”
The Cavs jumped out to a 16–9 lead. Tristan Thompson had four rebounds in less than five minutes. U’Ren sat nervously behind the Warriors bench, worried not so much that he might look as if that the team didn’t seem to be responding. It was then that assistant coach Chris DeMarco leaned over and told him not to worry. The Warriors were getting good looks at the rim and shots that weren’t falling now soon would.
He was right. Golden State ended the quarter up by seven, a lead that stretched to 12 by halftime. James had 10 points in the first half on 4-of-12 shooting. He came alive in the third quarter, scoring 10 points on 3-of-8 shooting, but Iguodala held him without a point in the fourth. He finished with 20 points while Iguodala scored a season-high 22, Bogut played less than three minutes on the night, and the Warriors won in a rout, 103–82.
Even though U’Ren’s “small-ball” lineup configuration didn’t put up outrageously good numbers that night—according to the advanced stats, they played the Cavs essentially even during 14 minutes on the court—the benefits were real. Golden State, as a whole, played far better defense overall—Cleveland had its lowest-scoring game of the playoffs—and now the series had swung in its favor. The Warriors’ seven turnovers were their fewest in any game of the regular season or playoffs. The psychological effect of seeing Iguodala outplay James had lifted them from their collective funk. “It’s just a street fight,” Draymond Green said. “Nobody’s doing anything dirty, but they’re battling and we’re battling, and that’s why this series is so exciting.”
The Warriors were now going home for Game 5. All they had to do was win the remaining games at Oracle Arena and the championship would be theirs.
After the game, Kerr quasi-apologized to the media for lying to them before the game about starting Bogut. “I don’t think they hand you the trophy based on morality. They give it to you if you win,” he said. “So sorry about that.” He also gave U’Ren full credit for suggesting the move. “He’s a major part of our staff, and I don’t care where an idea comes from,” Kerr said before Game 5, as if speaking from an employee handbook penned by Joe Lacob himself. “Doesn’t matter wherever the idea comes from. If it’s a good one, then we’ll use it.”
• • •
Steve Kerr stuck with Andre Iguodala in the starting lineup going forward because you don’t fix what isn’t broken. James’s play did pick up after his Game 4 debacle, as his 40 points, 14 boards, and 11 assists in Game 5 marked his third triple-double of the playoffs. Nearly a third of Cleveland’s ball touches on the night went through James’s mammoth hands, yet he committed only two turnovers.
But the Warriors were operating at peak performance. Curry played his best game since the conference finals, scoring 37 points on just 23 shots. After a lockdown third quarter in which Cleveland scored only 17 points, Golden State coasted to a 104–91 win to take a 3–2 lead in the series. Iguodala had 14 points, eight boards, and seven assists. Bogut? He never got into the game. Cleveland’s control of the series—looking so decisive less than a week earlier—was long gone.
The final dagger came when Curry knocked down a silly, spectacular three with 2:46 left to put the Warriors up by 10. Shadowed by Dellavedova, Curry set up the shot with a series of dribbles and crossovers that appeared possible only by polarized magnets propelling the ball away with such a forceful cadence. It was a vicious sleight of hand, fully indicative of the high level of hoops that this series, in its finest moments, had come to typify. Curry would later deem that shot his personal favorite of his career.
After the game, Curry was asked if that three might live on as some kind of signature moment in which this series took a decisive turn. He wouldn’t take the bait. As Curry said, “I’ll probably have a better answer for that question after we win the championship.”
Not if the Warriors win the title. After.
The series shifted to Cleveland for Game 6, and this time it was Golden State that raced out to an early lead. Nine points from Curry had them up by 13 after the first quarter, but the Cavs, behind 11 points from James, cut the Golden State lead to two at halftime. The Warriors won the third quarter, 28–18, thanks to eight points from, of all people, Festus Ezeli. That unlikely contribution pushed the lead to 12 with just 12 minutes to go.
Cleveland, at the brink of ultimate defeat, emptied its tank in the fourth quarter. James threw up 12 shots and scored 10 points, even while missing all four three-point attempts. J. R. Smith came off the bench to score 15 in the fourth, and it was his fourth and final three of the night that cut the Warriors’ lead to four with just 33 seconds to go, but free throws from Curry and Iguodala soon iced the game. The Cavs missed a trio of threes in the waning seconds and time ticked down. Curry grabbed the final rebound and threw the ball high in the air. Steve Kerr met David Blatt at midcourt to shake hands while his players screamed and jumped and held each other in triumph.
After 40 long years, the Golden State Warriors were champions again.
For both his defense on James and his timely offensive outbursts, Iguodala was named Finals MVP. The Cavs’ strategy in Game 6 was to envelop Curry and Thompson and force players like Iguodala to beat them. Well, he scored 25 points, dished out five assists, and was, by series’ end, the third-highest scorer in the Finals with 16.3 points a night. For the player who accepted a backup role after starting every game his entire career, the award was the ultimate validation. “I’m not even thinking about anything. My mind’s just blank,” he said. “This has been a long ride.”
For Klay Thompson, the son of a former No. 1 overall pick who’d won multiple titles, the sharpshooter with the cowboy-cool demeanor, the moment was almost too much. “It just feels good to say we’re the best team in the world,” he said. “It’s been a collective effort and we’re going to enjoy it tonight, man. We deserve to.”
For Draymond Green, the second-rounder whose game transcended traditional NBA labels, the night was about completing an improbable journey that started in Saginaw, Michigan. When the Warriors needed him to deliver, Green put up 16 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists for his first career playoff triple-double. “A lot of people said I could never play in this league. Too slow, too small, can’t shoot well enough, can’t defend nobody. What does he do well? He doesn’t have a skill,” he said. “I’ve got heart, and that’s what stands out. It was just one of those moments where it’s like I’ve always been doubted my entire life. . . . They can still say, oh, he’s too small, he’s too this, he’s too that. They can never take this away from me.”
For Shaun Livingston, a title meant a career that had finally come full circle. All the greatness predicted of him coming out of high school never came to pass, but he was now forever a champion. “To be here as a world champion with my brothers, man, it’s a loss for words,” he said. “It’s been such a long journey. I’ve had two careers, really. It felt like two lives that I lived. To be here now as a world champion, it’s the greatest feeling in the world. It makes the journey worth it.”
For veterans like Leandro Barbosa, Marreese Speights, Andrew Bogut, and David Lee, all staring at the downward slope of their professional lives, the celebration was a lifelong release from years spent chasing an elusive goal. For younger players like Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli—both from that loaded 2012 draft class that also produced Green—the win meant a career free of the kinds of pressures that snowball over time without a ring on your finger.
For Bob Myers, the night meant vindication for his move to the front office, a hiring that once turned heads across the industry. He brought a different experience to the job and learned as he went, but the moves he made built a basketball powerhouse for a new era. It was little surprise that, during the playoffs, Myers was named by the NBA as the 2015 Executive of the Year. And the Warriors’ investment in analytics and attention to rest and conditioning had paid off, as an ESPN study later concluded the Warriors had lost the fewest minutes to injury of any team in the league that year.
For Steve Kerr, the victory was the culmination of a life sown with both the greatest successes and the lowest failures, and now he was the first coach since Pat Riley in 1982 to win a championship in his debut season on the bench. He had also just coached the first champion to ever lead the NBA in pace, a clear sign of how the Warriors were fundamentally different from any of their peers.
For years, Kerr put off coaching until his three kids were older, until he was ready, until the perfect opportunity with the right people came along. It had been 12 years since he advanced this far in the playoffs, and for all his talk about experience, the grind still took its toll, the bulb of pain in his back a nascent sign of troubles to come. “I almost forgot just how grueling the stretch is,” he said. “I mean, two straight months of emotional stress and physical stress. Just the roller-coaster ride that you’re on. There are days when you think, boy, I don’t know if this is going to happen.”
In the moment, Kerr could appreciate that the Warriors benefited from the defending champion Spurs’ getting knocked out in the first round and from injuries to later opponents such as Houston and Cleveland. “Things went our way, but we took advantage of that,” Kerr added. “Every year that’s the case: A team falls, a team soars, there’s injuries, bounce of the ball, whatever. In the end, none of it matters. The only thing that matters is that we got the job done.” For Kerr, getting to celebrate this moment with not just his wife but his three kids—none of whom were even teenagers yet as of his last title with San Antonio—meant the world to him.
For Stephen Curry, the promise of a career built in his father’s shadow had, at last, been fulfilled. With 98 threes in 21 games, Curry set the all-time record for most threes in a single playoffs, smashing the old mark of 58 set by Indiana’s Reggie Miller in 2000. Curry was now an MVP, regarded as one of the most devastating shooters in NBA history, and, for all time, a champion. He was the longest-tenured Warrior, the lone survivor of the Chris Cohan regime. A few minutes after the final horn, he kissed and hugged Ayesha and Riley out on the court, the realization of what had transpired slowly starting to sink in.
“I think we can actually appreciate what we were able to do this year from start to finish,” Curry said. “It’s hard in the moment to really understood what 67 wins means in the grand scheme of the history of the NBA, how hard that is, but then also to cap that off with a championship playoff run. So we’ll appreciate, I think, that whole journey a lot more now, be able to reflect. I think we definitely are a great team and a team that should go down in history as one of the best teams from top to bottom. We have a lot of things to be proud of this season.
“I’m just so happy, man. God is great.”
• • •
They started arriving at 3:00 a.m.
From Pacifica to Petaluma, from San Jose to Sonoma, and everywhere in between throughout the Bay Area, a half-million people, according to the police, crowded into downtown Oakland on a Friday morning to kick off a celebration 40 years in the making. They came to salute the Warriors for completing one of the most historically dominant seasons in NBA history. They came to, once and for all, exorcise the demons bestowed by past ownership. They came to remember the beloved Golden State stars who never got this far: Chris Mullin, Mitch Richmond, Jason Richardson, Tim Hardaway, Baron Davis, and dozens more. They came to thank Stephen Curry for sticking around. They came to thank Joe Lacob and his ownership group, who made good on his promise to turn the organization around within five years.
And it did take only five years—rather, four years, seven months, and one day, as Lacob reminded the crowd—to deliver a once-improbable championship.
Everyone got their turn at the podium that day in the glaring Oakland sun. The star was Kerr, who again played the comedian role he’d perfected in 1997 when he took credit for “bailing out” Michael Jordan with the game-winning shot. This time around, Kerr recounted how he’d taken the job just nine months earlier and worried about all he’d have to improve upon in such a short time: “Not much talent. Very little shooting. Not much defense. The versatility was suspect. More than anything, just shaky character. I mean, look at these guys.” He then ran through the litany of everything the Warriors did so well, the winking and nodding practically visible from Concord. His parting words, to a wave of laughter: “So, in nine months, I did all that, so thanks!”
But for everyone who spoke that afternoon, three days after the dream had been made real, the moment may have meant the most to Joe Lacob. With Lake Merritt gleaming in the distance and Warriors fans hanging on his every word, he got up and spoke for 10 minutes. The chorus of boos born on March 19, 2012, that nearly derailed his time as owner before it began in earnest felt like decades ago. He thanked everyone up and down the organization. He thanked the fans—“our greatest asset!”—for sticking through the lean times and the players for representing the organization so well. He last thanked his fiancée, Nicole Curran, for putting up with the “insanity” that comes with running a professional team.
Then, as if to magnify the sheer importance of it all, Lacob parted with both a proclamation and a promise.
“This . . . was . . . no . . . accident. Nothing about this was an accident.”
He paused to look down at his notes before exiting.
“And it will not be an accident when we do it again!”