As I mentioned in the previous article, after Game 2, I had Adam Silver in my crosshairs for what intuitively felt like too much physicality the Houston Rockets were getting away with. But because I’m preaching it to our YouTube audience, I told myself to try and stay emotionally regulated and verify the hunch by actually rewatching the game film.
What I witnessed in the analysis of Q1 of G2 was a ton of mindless turnovers — okay, three, but in the first six minutes of play which mathematically extrapolates to, gulp, 24 turnovers by a single player in a fully played game — by one Wardell Stephen Curry.
And, get this: the refs were giving the Warriors a lot of the calls early in the game. Of course, they egregiously missed the trip of Gary Payton II when Golden State was already down, 20-11, but somehow the Dubs got a stop during the next Houston possession and cut the lead to 20-13, so technically that missed call didn’t hurt us.
Of course, Jimmy Butler got hurt soon after that and, despite a valiant effort by the bench guys, it seemed like the Rockets bludgeoned the Jimmy-less squad for the remaining 36-plus minutes.
The other thing that made it bad was that Curry was hunting shots. The only three he made was off a probably-illegal screen by Moses Moody (in that case, the refs let one go for Golden State!) and so I made the conclusion that Curry was trying to steal the game in his “dagger” way, an approach heading into Game 2 whereby he knew in the back of his mind that Butler could calm things down if the early salvo didn’t work, let alone the fact that there would still be 36 minutes to adjust.
But Jimmy got knocked out of the game, so that strategy blew up in Curry’s face. And those three individual turnovers couldn’t even be attributed to the Rockets’ physicality because he’s seen and we’ve seen way worse in the past. Just, like, go watch the game tape. The turnovers are rather appalling, indeed.
But as we all know, turnovers are all part of Steph being Steph.
I looked it up: since 2022, the Warriors are 3-7 in playoff or Play-in games when he’s committed five or more turnovers. And GSW actually went 2-1 when he did that in 2022, so the real stat is that they’re 1-5 since 2023 when he commits 5+ turnovers. Dean and I dove into theories as to why 2022 was different, see podcast, below.
Anyways, I opened the last livestream (aka Game 3 Watch Party) with a pregame video essay that explains all of this, and then I had it the edited version of it lead off the latest podcast [YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes links below]:
physicality, Steph’s approach in G2 vs G3, why Curry wasn’t as turnover-prone in 2022, Alvin of the Chipmunks? Urkel?, Jimmy Butler & the Bat-signal, Game 4 preview [TIMESTAMPED!]”,”subtitle”:”Let’s Go Warriors”,”description”:”Episode”,”url”:”https://open.spotify.com/episode/1uUytDsZeqjYZKKuiVVfOv”,”belowTheFold”:true,”noScroll”:false}” src=”https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/1uUytDsZeqjYZKKuiVVfOv” frameborder=”0″ gesture=”media” allowfullscreen=”true” allow=”encrypted-media” loading=”lazy” data-component-name=”Spotify2ToDOM”>
My co-host Dean “of Positivity” Chambers even made analogy that Steph is like Alvin of the Chipmunks, where Alvin is asked if things are going okay and he always says yes, and yet something will go wrong — I guess Alvin could be the actual cartoon incarnation of “organized chaos.”
Now, if you look at our behind-the-scenes courtside highlights videos, you’ll often see just how Steph manages the game by directing traffic. He even yelled at Gary to give him the ball as GP2 was walking it up late in Game 3:
And here’s the actual up-close clips from the game:
So the good news of Curry tricking off — yeah, I know, rather harsh description of it — Game 2, at least the first quarter? He still commands the game toward his will, outside of shots going in or not.
We saw him pull the reins in a little at the start of Game 3, i.e., only one maybe two turnovers and probably zero or one rushed shots in the first half. Then he went for the dagger kills later in the game and succeeded.
Credit the rest of the guys, sans Jimmy, for stepping up and executing and taking the time they needed to gel, although even Draymond Green went on his podcast yesterday and told his co-host Baron Davis he himself has got to stop turning the ball over so much.
The fact that, to me, how Curry approaches the game and that having such a strong bearing on which way the game will go — this is the opposite way of thinking about his penchant for turnovers, rather than the pulling-your-hair-out negative approach — tells me that we’ve got this, at least for this series and whether or not Jimmy comes back, which it looks like he is.
Game 3 practice, pregame and postgame interviews and transcripts below the video embeds, behind the paywall, as I explained in the previous post. I’ll unlock the transcripts from the previous post after I publish this one. If you’re thirsty for the transcripts, just go to the Comments section on YouTube of any of the videos below: