SAN FRANCISCO – The fourth quarter generally is when games are won in the NBA Finals, and that’s when the young Celtics, along with their lone senior citizen, made their first attempt to turn the Warriors gray on the league’s biggest stage.
While Golden State had not played in a week, the Celtics closed a seven-game series on Sunday in Miami, flew home to Boston on Monday and flew west to San Francisco on Tuesday. Those factors seemed in play when the Warriors owned the third quarter of Game 1 and took a 12-point lead into the fourth Thursday night. Winning time was swinging their way.
But the Celtics came out for the fourth quarter as if they had spent the first three as thoroughbreds idling in a stall, chomping at the bit. They scored 26 points in less than seven minutes, while shooting 6-of-6 from beyond the arc, led by three with 5:10 remaining and rolled to a 120-108 victory to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
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“It’s the first team to win four games, not the first to win one,” Draymond Green said.
That’s a statement of fact.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Klay Thompson said. “We’ll regroup tomorrow. We'll bring a much better effort on Sunday.”
That’s a statement of faith.
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The cold truth is that this was a substantial setback for the Warriors. Stephen Curry was splendid, Otto Porter Jr. returned and shot marvelously, Andrew Wiggins was solid and Andre Iguodala, in his first action since April 24, was capable.
Moreover, the Warriors throughout their history under coach Steve Kerr have been Game 1 bullies. His 21-2 record in Game 1s is the best of any coach with more than five such games on his resumé. And Golden State’s “championship DNA” was on display in third, during which they erased a two-point halftime deficit and led by as much as 15 while outscoring the Celtics 38-24.
How fast did it go wrong? The Warriors trailed by as much as 15 in the fourth.
They came apart when, as the more experienced and rested squad, they should have been pressing the accelerator. Rather, they scored 16 points, were outrebounded 11-6, gave the Celtics 10 points off turnovers, allowed them to shoot 75.0 percent from deep and ring up 40 points.
Golden State’s worst quarter was the one that mattered most. They looked confused and distressed.
“When you're making shots, that's a boost,” Green said. “And when you're missing shots, it's a Debbie Downer. And that's kind of what it was. They made them; we missed them. Sometimes you can allow missed shots to drag your defense down. A little bit of that happened in the fourth quarter as well.
“You've got to give them credit. They made the shots when they needed to make them.”
Al Horford, who turns 36 on Friday, led the way, scoring 11 points on 4-of-4 shooting, including 2-of-2 from distance, in six fourth-quarter minutes. Jaylen Brown, 25 years old, scored 10, Marcus Smart (28) and Derrick White (27) combined for 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting beyond the arc. Payton Pritchard (24) chipped in five points on 2-of-3 shooting.
Jayson Tatum, 24, a three-time All-Star and Boston’s best player, was scoreless in the fourth but got in on the fun by recording four assists.
The Celtics accomplished their comeback as much on their own merit as a meltdown on the part of the Warriors.
“We have been through this a couple times, you lose in the first game of a series,” Curry said. “But we have obviously had some tough losses in a series. And you find a way to bounce back. You have to rely on that experience but it's also just making the necessary game plan adjustments and coming out with a focused effort that everybody can kind of feel like they are going to impact the game at some point.”
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Golden State’s stunning fourth-quarter collapse ruined what had been a fantastic performance by Curry. From the opening tip, he came at the Celtics like a volley of punches to the mouth, as if he wanted to see them carried out of Chase Center on a stretcher before halftime.
Curry scored 21 points in the first quarter – the highest individual total in a Finals quarter since Michael Jordan poured in 22 against the Suns in 1993. Curry drained six 3-pointers, a record for any quarter in the Finals.
The Celtics made it irrelevant.
“Been watching the playoffs all year, you kind of know that's their team,” Kevon Looney said. “They get punched in the mouth, but they always stay around, and they make runs, and they might even lose the game and you think the series might have changed.
“And then they come back and kind of win. They don't really get down you know on themselves. They always keep fighting and playing their style of basketball.”
Boston’s style of basketball on this night was stirring and forceful and, in the end, an impressive display of pluck and zest. It carried them.
The older team, with the game on the line, looked the part. The Warriors can bounce back, to be sure, but winning four of six without homecourt advantage is considerably harder than winning four of seven with it.