Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
Stephen Curry’s first playoff series win for the Golden State Warriors was 12 years ago Friday, sealed with a 92-88 victory over the Denver Nuggets in the sixth game of their first-round matchup. As Curry remembered Monday night, one win away from another series win: “We turned the ball over so many times and it felt like it was the longest two-, three-minute stretch to finish a game.”
Indeed, the Warriors had 10 fourth-quarter giveaways, nearly squandering an 18-point lead instead of claiming the first of 23 series he’s won with Golden State.
“It’s helpful to go through it a bunch of times over the last decade,” Curry continued from the postgame podium. “But it is just an experience that takes everything out of you because you know a team doesn’t want to lay down. They’re not going to quit. They’re going to feed off their home crowd.”
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With one more win against the Houston Rockets — whom they’ll play Wednesday at Toyota Center in Game 5 of their first-round playoff matchup — the Warriors can advance to Western Conference semifinals against the Minnesota Timberwolves or Los Angeles Lakers. They gained a 3-1 series lead Monday with a 109-106 victory at Chase Center.
Teams with 3-1 leads in best-of-seven matchups are 275-13 — the Warriors overcame a 3-1 deficit in 2016 to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals and lost a 3-1 lead to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals — and are 82-3 in first-round play.
“We know they’re going to try to come out and punch us in the mouth. Any team facing elimination is going to do that,” forward-center Draymond Green said. “You find a physical, proud team like they are — they’re definitely going to do that. We’ve just got to go in there and take the punch and then deliver your own back.”
To beat the Rockets again Monday night, the Warriors turned to another starting lineup: Curry, Green, Jimmy Butler, Brandin Podziemski and Buddy Hield. Incumbent starting swingman Moses Moody was made a reserve amid Hield’s first career playoff start, rejiggering Golden State’s spacing offensively and scrambling Houston’s defensive matchups.
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Throughout the series, Houston star big man Alperen Sengün had guarded Moody, a spot-up shooter who drives against closeouts and guards across the opposing perimeter. Hield rates as a better shooter — he’s second to Curry in triples since 2016-17 — and scorer, albeit as a lesser perimeter defender.
The fivesome won 15 minutes 44-20. Hield twice stripped Houston’s Jalen Green in the first quarter. Said head coach Steve Kerr: “That unit gave us more speed, more shooting, and it forced some matchups for them to make the game a little bit more difficult for them.”
The Rockets countered by turning to lineups with Sengün and Steven Adams, a bruising, rebounding, screen-setting center who bolsters their presence in the paint and on the glass. A zone defense kept the pairing from the perimeter and muddied Golden State’s pathways to the basket.
Lineups featuring Sengün and Adams won 23 minutes by 18 points.
As for Game 5, Kerr expects another tactical battle — along with the “hardest” game for Golden State amid Houston’s impending desperation.
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“Every game is different,” Kerr said. “They made big adjustments tonight. … Next game could be entirely different as well. All these things unfold differently each game and you have to adapt and adjust.”
Briefly: Butler is listed as probable for Wednesday with a pelvic contusion on the NBA injury report.
