SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
Jason Kidd was not upset. He would have liked to open the National Basketball Association Western Conference finals with a win, but in this case he simply shrugged off the whooping 112-87 loss at Golden State’s Chase Center Wednesday night.
“Look,” he said in the aftermath,” It’s game one and we’re still here, in the finals that wasn’t expected by everybody. We’ve bounced back before, ask the Phoenix Suns. On this night, we were just outplayed, fell behind early and never recovered after closing to within nine points at the half.”
Kidd has been down this road before, lost back-to-back finals when playing with the then-New Jersey Nets. But when in the lineup for the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, won the championship. As a head coach he has comes up zero, and this is the furthest he’s gone since being hired by Dallas owner Marc Cuban prior to last season.
But the Warriors have also been through the grind, and now they have brought back memories of the 2007 “We Believe.” when they stunned the No. 1-ranked Mavericks in a six-game upset at home. That helped propel Golden State to prominence. It reached five straight NBA finals from 2015-19, but missed the playoffs the last two years before this run with Steve Kerr remaining as head coach.
Now it’s one win closer to returning to the main stage. Or to be more precise, need to win this best-of-seven series with the Mavs and its already claimed the game one.
“Jason has done a marvelous job with Dallas,” said Kerr. “That was quite a super run against Phoenix, the top seed in the West, and in that seventh game at the Suns the Mavericks just ran them off the court. So I’m impressed, and I hope we can continue putting it all together. As Jason said, it’s only one game.”
But this one game had a variety of stars for Kerr’s team. Of course, sharpshooter Stephen Curry came away with 21 points, but also important, he brought down a game-high dozen rebounds, and also handing out four assists. Andrew Wiggins, one of the better pickups for Golden State, added 19 points and got his team going by making six of his first eight shots on the way to shooting 8 for 17. Plus starting guard Kevon Looney was back in the lineup after sitting out the last three games versus the Memphis Grizzlies with COVID-19.
And Klay Thompson tossed in all of his 15 points after halftime, his first of the contest on a layup at the 10:22 mark of the third quarter after missing his first four shots.
But the Warriors defense deserved many kudos for containing Dallas’ top scorer Lukas Doncic. He came up with 20 points but shot only 6-for-18 and from beyond the arc, was but 3-for-10. He did make back-to-back 3s to get his team within 54-45 at the intermission before a packed house of raucous, yellow-clad Golden State fans.
Jalen Brunson tallied 14 points for Dallas, but missed all five of his 3s after piecing together a stellar game in the 129-90 thumping of the Suns in Phoenix in game seven Sunday.
But for Doncic, it wasn’t much of a night, in other words more bad then good. He received a scratch across his face early from a first-quarter swiple by Wiggins, who handled the defensive load against Doncic. The mark went from the bridge of the star guard’s nose across his right cheek under the eye, plus he also tugged at his troublesome right shoulder that has been taped previously during these playoffs.
And it was nice of Wiggins to drop by the Dallas locker after the game to check on Doncic.
Said Kidd, “They did a very good job on Lukas, especially Wiggins picking him up at full court. They went box-and-one, they went zone. We understood coming into this series that we were going to see that. We will go back and look at the video to see what we can do better.”
But he added that it’s not over until it’s over, and that the Mavericks will be looking to bounce back as they’ve done before.
Let’s not forget the Eastern finals where the top-seeded Miami Heat are up 1-0 against the 3rd-seeded Boston Celtics.
Four teams left in the hunt for the finals, and at this time Miami and Golden State hold home court advantage. No matter, Boston and Dallas have done well on the road.
