Tuesday, April 19, 2022

A Fan’s Notes: Two Games into the Warriors 2022 Playoff Run


This season has been such a wild ride with exalted highs and depressing lows and it feels like this team might be cresting to its peak, good lord. After cruising to a dominant 126-106 win in Game 2 of our series against the depleted Nuggets, us Warriors fans are riding high again. The 2022 iteration of our hallowed Death Lineup is running the hapless Nuggets off the court. Before this series began, I, like many others, cautiously but pragmatically picked the Dubs to win in 6, but right now it’s looking like a gentleman’s sweep at most. There’s no reason we can’t whip out the brooms on the Nuggets. When Steph, Poole, Klay, Wiggins, and Draymond hit the court and go Voltron against Denver, poor Nikola Jokić—probable two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić!—looks like Timofey Mozgov in the 2015 NBA Finals.

The Nuggets are done. They have no counter. With injuries to their second and third-best players, they lack the personnel to make a move to stymie these 2022 Warriors. Our path to a fourth championship with our aging core is to play the least number of playoff games possible so we’re not putting any additional and unnecessary mileage on Steph, Klay, Draymond, and Iggy so we need to not fuck around and finish these Nuggets off.

After a 33-32 first quarter against the Timberwolves, the Memphis Grizzlies took command and responded in Game 2 after stunningly losing their home opener. The Grizzlies are still the only team in the Western Conference I fear. I’ve seen Steph, Poole, Klay, Wiggins, and Draymond lay waste to the undermanned Nuggets, but I badly want to see that lineup pitted against stronger opposition, like the Grizz and the Suns. In 11 minutes of action, they have a preposterous offensive rating of 204.3 (meaning they would score 204 points in 100 possessions) with a defensive rating of 75.0:

With Klay’s shooting basically back to classic Klay form, Steph already looking like himself in his second game back from injury (32 points in just 23 minutes in Game 2!), Draymond being Draymond, Jordan Poole looking like Monta Ellis if Steph had mentored him, and Wiggins—a former #1 overall pick—capably filling into the last spot, any team in the league is gonna have big problems trying to stop this five-man lineup. Memphis and Phoenix have the depth and talent to try to counter, but no team has had the unenviable task of trying to cover Steph, a Steph-like clone (in Poole), and one of the greatest NBA shooters of all time. Yeah, good fucking luck with that.

The 64-win Suns just dropped Game 2 to the Pelicans, who squeaked into the playoffs courtesy of the NBA’s still-new play-in format, and a realistic path back to the Finals is looking better and better for the Dubs. I think the Grizz will prevail against the Wolves, and I think there’s no way the Warriors lose to the Suns if we get past the Grizzlies. Before the playoffs started, I had no fear of the Suns; less so now. If we’re mostly healthy, I think we can knock them off in a gentleman’s sweep. No disrespect meant to the Suns, but we’re a bad matchup for them. And man, it would be outrageously sweet to send CP3 packing so deep into the playoffs! Might very well be the last time he comes so close to winning a chip.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself and look east to see how the playoff action might turn out there. We’ve still got a lot of games to play.

But we’ve got 14 more wins to go.


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