OKLAHOMA CITY -- The stage was set for a classic, and the defending champion Golden State Warriors instead suffered another stomping from an Oklahoma City Thunder team that appears to be the paradoxical dominant underdog. Game 4 of the Western Conference finals ended after the Warriors lost contact in the second quarter and couldn't close the gap in a 118-94 loss on Tuesday night.
Before the slaughter, the Warriors faced some miniature adversity at Tuesday morning's shootaround. A group entered some of the cheaper seats at Chesapeake Energy Arena and started screaming chants for their home team. With mischievous intent, Draymond Green, who stirred controversy in Game 3 for kicking Thunder center Steven Adams below the belt, kicked his leg in their general direction.
If he was to be public enemy No. 1 in these parts, he might as well relish it. Green’s game is multifaceted, but defiance might define it. When he started the game, boos serenaded his every touch. But he was pressing, far too hard. The result was a series of passes nowhere close to the mark.
After this latest stomping in Oklahoma City, it’s now hard for the Warriors, down 3-1 in the series, to stand in defiance of the facts -- and an ominous reality. Are they done? No, not technically. It’s theoretically possible for a team to win three remaining games with two left at home. But it’s difficult to find even morsels of optimism within these latest performances, back-to-back losses for the first time all season.
If Stephen Curry is going to miss badly at the rim, if Green is going to throw away passes, there’s little chance of going 3-for-3. Odds are long and the death watch is on for the 73-win team.
In the past, Golden State has struggled against teams that favored a differing style. Now, the supreme challenge is a squad that wishes to run. And when Oklahoma City runs, it does so with superior speed and size. Russell Westbrook (36 points, 27 shots, 11 assists) looked quite comfortable moving at warp speed as Curry (19 points, 20 shots) was moving as though under water.
Between moving fast on offense, a once questionable Thunder defense has leveraged its size to devastating effect, hounding Golden State into costly mistakes. Curry and Green looked especially affected while trying to throw through traffic.
For the Warriors, even when things go well, they don’t. On one play in the second quarter, Green wisely shoveled the ball to Shaun Livingston while Kevin Durant was in midair. Incredibly, Durant leaped as though projected by a geyser to rob Livingston of a sure dunk. That’s one of a few plays that may as well symbolize the series. The Warriors have plans, and the Thunder have intensely applied athleticism to disrupt them.
Klay Thompson gave the Warriors a brief burst of CPR in the third quarter, awaking to score 19 points in the stanza. Though he closed the gap to something theoretically manageable (eight points), he just couldn’t get his backcourt mate to join in on the march (Curry was scoreless in the third).
Ultimately this was a game lost in the first half, when the Warriors again let the game run away from them. Golden State will almost certainly broadcast belief -- the squad won 73 games after all. But at the present, Oklahoma City is bigger, tougher and playing substantially better. The great season that served as a postseason preamble can’t be counted on to save the Warriors from this lurch. They must rapidly improve -- and immediately.