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SAN FRANCISCO — That had to have been the most excruciating win of the season. Also the most satisfying.
For the first 47 minutes and 12.5 seconds of the game Monday night, the Warriors couldn’t get over the hump. A combination of turnovers, sloppy play, ice-cold shooting from 3-point land and shoddy defense prevented Golden State from taking a lead all night. But finally, with 47.5 seconds remaining, Steph Curry knocked down a free throw to give the Warriors their first lead of the evening.
The game was ugly. Beyond ugly even. Yet, Golden State emerged out the muck with a 101-98 victory to take a commanding 3-1 series lead over the Grizzlies in the Western Conference semifinals.
The day was an emotional roller coaster for the organization, as Warriors coach Steve Kerr was ruled out due to COVID shortly before tip-off. Mike Brown took over as acting head coach, just hours after he was announced as the Kings head coach for 2022-23. Draymond Green was playing with a heavy heart after his friend and former Michigan State teammate Adreian Payne died at the age of 31 earlier in the day.
The Warriors found a way to win, though. After the victory, assistant coach Chris DeMarco started joking with Brown about the slog they just endured.
“He said, ‘We just kept handing the ball off to the fullback left and right, and at the end of the game we kicked a field goal to win it. Hell of a football game,’” Brown said. “And that’s what it was. But that’s playoff basketball. Sometimes it’s grimy. Sometimes it’s gritty.”
The Warriors found themselves wading through a malaise to begin the game, with a whopping 10 turnovers in 16 minutes to start the game. When they weren’t throwing the ball away, the Warriors were clanking threes. In fact, Golden State remarkably missed its first 14 3-point attempts. Steph Curry (4-of-14), Klay Thompson (0-of-7) and Jordan Poole (0-for-3) went a combined 4-of-24 from 3-point land.
“Me, (Steph) and JP, the shots were not falling like we wanted them to,” Thompson said. “I just knew we were going to win the game. I just had a feeling. It was ugly, but at this time of year, all that matters is that win.”
You just kept waiting for the game to turn, but it never seemed like it would. It felt like one of those nights where the Warriors were gonna play themselves into a defeat against a Grizzlies team that didn’t feature Ja Morant, who was injured in Game 3.
The Grizzlies’ lead ballooned as high as 12 early in the fourth quarter. The Warriors couldn’t seem to get a stop when they needed it, as Tyus Jones and Jaren Jackson Jr. kept delivering key buckets.
Golden State kept grinding, though, riding the defense of Andrew Wiggins and Green until finally mounting up Memphis in the final minute. Once Jackson’s out-of-control 3-point attempt missed with 12 seconds left and Curry knocked down some insurance free throws on the other end, the Warriors could finally breathe easy. Or yell, like Green did after Curry sealed the win.
“We’ve been here before and we know how to pull off games like this, whether it happens or not,” Curry said. “It’s just about how you approach it and we made that happen.”
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It was a wild day for Brown, who got a call from Kerr about 2 hours, 15 minutes before tip-off and learned that the head coach wasn’t feeling good. Thirty minutes later, the Warriors announced that Kerr tested positive, so Brown had to switch gears. Brown gave a lot of credit to his fellow assistants like Kenny Atkinson and Bruce Fraser, and veterans like Green and Andre Iguodala.
“Obviously, there’s butterflies, because again, you’re going into the game with a certain mindset and it’s a big game,” Brown said. “So to have that kind of thrown at you, you’ve got to switch gears because I know what my responsibilities are going in as Mike Brown the assistant coach, and it changes.Now you have to manage everything and not necessarily manage the specific things that you are asked to do before game time. So I had to change hats quickly.”
Now the series will move to Memphis for Game 5 on Wednesday, when the Warriors can close out the Grizzlies’ season with a victory.
“Wednesday is gonna be the hardest one yet,” Thompson said. “It always is, the closeout. We have to put this behind us and put together a good gameplan.”
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