Golden State Warriors vs Los Angeles Clippers: Game 1 Story Lines From National Writers (Photo: )
STAPLES CENTER, LOS ANGELES, CA — Along with the local Bay Area Golden State Warriors beatwriters’ themes and storylines from Game 1 against the Los Angeles Clippers, a 109-105 victory for the Warriors, here’s what they were saying from the national journalists who were there…
On Blake Griffin‘s throwing water on a fan and Griffin’s subpar performance
Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times:
“I was like, ‘Bro, I’m just trying to watch the game and now I’m all wet,'” said Will Meldman, the 23-year-old San Francisco resident who was doused.
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Meldman said he didn’t think it was intentional, but his buddy Justin Wolf disagreed.
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“For sure, he was frustrated, and he saw us, and he just threw the water backward,” Wolf said.
When asked about the incident during his postgame news conference, Griffin quickly claimed that the cup wasn’t actually full, and then shrugged.
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“I heard [the fan] say something, I didn’t know exactly what I did … if I did, I apologize,” he said before lowering his voice. “It was water.”
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It may have been only water, but this was not only a game, it was the spring unveiling of a potential championship contender against an outmanned and undersized opponent. It was the first Clippers playoff game where an opposing coach, Golden State’s Mark Jackson, actually said, “If I’m sitting in the other room [with TV announcers], I’m picking the Clippers.”
It was a raucous arena filled with red shirts, fireworks smoke, Donna Summer beats, and public-address announcer Eric Smith shouting, “This is playoff basketball..Clipper Nation on your feet!”
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Everyone stood, it seemed, but Griffin, who spent most of the game on the bench biting a towel. It is not a place where MVP candidates spend big moments. It is not how team leaders lead. Yet it was exactly the spot where critics have claimed that Griffin always seems to end up in the spring.
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This season it was supposed to be different. This season Griffin took the huge step toward becoming one of the league’s elite players. Or did he?
“When our guy only plays 19 minutes, it’s tough,” Chris Paul said. “I kept telling B, ‘I need you, I need you.'”
Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports:
Meldman, who was wearing a yellow “We are Warriors” shirt, wasn’t sure if Griffin intentionally tried to douse him. The Clippers gave him a towel to dry off.
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“Honestly, I think it fell out of his hand,” Meldman said. “He fouled out and he was frustrated, so it just fell out of his hand. It just slipped out.
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“It may or may not be on purpose.”
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Warriors fan Will Meldman reacts after having water tossed on him by Blake Griffin. (AP)
Meldman’s reaction when the water hit him: ” ‘Bro, c’mon. I’m trying to watch the game.’ ”
Griffin said he didn’t try to get Meldman wet.
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“I didn’t know what I did, but it wasn’t full,” Griffin said. “I apologize. It was water.”
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Meldman’s friend, Justin Wolf, who was seated next to him, thought Griffin knew exactly what he was doing.
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“I thought it was intentional,” Wolf said. “He tends to do a little [expletive] during games, and he might have been pissed off on what [Warriors guard] Klay [Thompson] said.”
Spears with another column:
A fresh Griffin started the second half and seemed motivated and fresh from the onset. He scored six quick points on a turnaround jumper, a dunk and two made free throws to give the Clippers a 58-54 lead with 10:21 remaining in the third quarter.
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But Griffin, disqualified from four games during the regular season, also picked up two more fouls, the second of those with 57.8 seconds left in the third. Lee yelled out, “Fifth,” twice in satisfaction. With Griffin out, the Warriors went into the fourth quarter with an 87-79 lead.
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Blake Griffin is fouled by Warriors’ Jermaine O’Neal in the second half. (USA TODAY Sports)
“It was tough. It was huge,” Paul said. “Blake is our go-to guy. Contrary to what people may think, we play through B.G. He’s tough to guard. When our guy only plays 19 minutes, it’s tough. I kept telling ‘B’ I need you.”
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After waiting to check in for a lengthy time at the scorer’s table, Griffin finally got back in the game with 5:07 remaining with the Clippers down 98-92. He scored on a bank hook shot with 4:13 left to trim the Warriors’ lead to 98-94, but that was his last field goal of the game. With the game tied at 105, Griffin picked up his game-ejecting sixth foul with 48.3 seconds left.
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“I thought he was going to play well,” Rivers said. “It’s tough to get your rhythm when you go in and out like that and only play 19 minutes. I’m sure Blake would like to have a couple of those fouls back. You can’t waste fouls.”
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The Clippers went scoreless the rest of the way with Griffin out. He watched in frustration as the Warriors made four free throws to seal the big road playoff victory.
On Chris Paul‘s legacy and not having won in the first round recently
Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com:
The ending was uncharacteristic for Paul, who scored 28 points — 10 in the final period alone — and had eight assists and seven rebounds. He was the biggest reason the Clippers had even rallied from an 11-point deficit to take the lead in the final two minutes, but his inability to close the game, highlighted by his late-game errors, provided a result that hasn’t been uncharacteristic of Paul’s teams in the playoffs.
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He is arguably the best point guard in basketball and one of the top five players in the league, but Paul is now 16-25 in the postseason and hasn’t made it past the second round in his career or won a game outside of the first round since 2008.
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Paul, 28, is still shaping his legacy, but the potential for that legacy can never be fulfilled without a title, which is a big reason coach Doc Rivers was pried away from the Boston Celtics after last season. Rivers brought a championship ring and a championship pedigree as a coach to the Clippers, which is something Paul never had before.
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“Eventually,” Rivers said when asked if Paul had to win in the postseason for his legacy. “I hope now. Let’s do it both ways. Let’s say he wins in the Finals. He’s got a legacy. Let’s say he doesn’t this year but does it next year. He has a legacy. The legacy should be done when you’re finished with your career and then you have legacy. He’ll have one, and it will be a great one.”
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Paul’s legacy will not be defined by a first-round game or series. He recalls beating the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center in Game 1 of their first-round series in 2011 as a member of the New Orleans Hornets before losing in six games. He also remembers winning the first two games of last season’s first-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies before losing in six games. His legacy will be shaped over the next two months if he is able to advance to his first conference finals and NBA Finals. But first, he has to once again get past the first round.
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“We could have won this game,” Paul said. “It would have been nice, but we still would have said there are a lot of things we need to better. … Luckily, this isn’t football. It’s not any given Saturday or Sunday. You got to do it four times, so we’ll just move on.”On how the fouls affected the game-calling by the referees
Ramona Shelbourne of ESPN.com:
“I thought all the hype absolutely had an impact on how the game was called,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “There’s no doubt about that. A lot of tight, touch fouls. I thought Blake, of the six [fouls], three of them were probably touch fouls. Same thing with [Chris Paul, who had five fouls].
.”But the way I look at is, both teams have to play under the same rules. They did a better job of playing under the same rules that we had to play under.”
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In all, the referees in Saturday’s game called 51 fouls, 29 in the first half, in which Iguodala collected four fouls in 11 minutes and Griffin was limited to less than four minutes with three fouls.
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The 51 fouls is not an obscene number — the four regular-season games between the teams averaged 47 fouls — but it did seem to affect both the flow and outcome of the game.On Mark Jackson‘s coaching
J.A. Adande of ESPN.com:
The X’s and O’s worked in Jackson’s favor. So did the other essential component of coaching in the NBA: connecting with players. O’Neal and Iguodala, two veterans with 133 games of playoff experience between them, noted how the younger players maintained their composure even during the game’s most trying times.
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“To me, that’s the sign of growth,” O’Neal said.
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These are the abstract things that Jackson speaks of so often that become very tangible during the playoffs. It’s why this team has won at least one road game in three playoff series dating back to last year. It’s why even though Jackson freely admits he would have picked the Clippers if he had his old job next to Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy at the ABC broadcast table, the guy coaching on the Warriors bench believes his team will win the series.
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“Because I’ve gotten the opportunity, the luxury, of watching these guys every single day,” Jackson said. “I’ve watched these guys for three years now. I know what they put into this. I know how they embrace the spotlight. I know how they’ve competed and defeated the odds. I know how they broke generational curses. And were able to turn a losing — with all due respect — franchise into a team that has gone into the playoffs back-to-back years. I know how they chased down 51 wins and got in the conversation with guys like Wilt [Chamberlain] and [Rick] Barry and [Chris] Mullin and [Al] Attles — some rare air in the Bay Area. But these guys are made of the right stuff. Seeing them every day, I won’t bet against them.”On Draymond Green‘s defense
Ethan Strauss of ESPN.com:
You could spot the effort on a play that almost ended disastrously for the Warriors. Green raced back to halt a Clippers fast break in the second quarter, only to see his knee buckle under the strain of guarding a Matt Barnes Eurostep. Green was escorted to the locker room with an ominous sounding “knee injury.”
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If the Warriors weren’t doomed by Andrew Bogut’s rib injury, they were certainly finished now. Golden State was already desperate against the formidable Jordan-Griffin frontline, going small, shrinking each subsequent unit like a Russian nesting doll. The creative lineups demanded Green’s rebounding, passing and defense.
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Fortunately for Golden State, Green came back late in the third quarter. Within two minutes, he was racing back to stop another Los Angeles transition try, when Jamal Crawford and Darren Collison had Green in a pickle on a 2-for-1 break.
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Unfazed by the earlier injury scare, Green juked towards Crawford, who passed the ball to a streaking Collison. Green whipped around, and with full extension, sent Collison’s layup screaming off the backboard.
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When asked if he’d broken up any 2-on-1s in that way this season, Green laughed, “Not that I remember,” adding “That was a pretty decent play.”On the Warriors playing like they had something to prove
Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA. com’s Hangtime Blog:
“A lot, a lot,” forward Draymond Green said when asked if the 2014 start in L.A. reminded him of the 2013 start in Denver. “Coming in, we were the underdog. It was a 3-6 matchup. The only thing different is we let that game go in Denver and (the Nuggets) got Game 1. But at the end of the day, we come here to take care of business. We’re not coming in with the underdog mindset or with that mindset that we have nothing to lose. We feel like we’re just as good or better a basketball team as them and we’re going to continue to play like that and let the cards fall how they may.”
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When the 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series was secured, ahead of Game 2 here Monday night, Klay Thompson spiked the ball into the court with a hard swing of his right arm. But mostly the Warriors exchanged high fives and walked calmly into the tunnel at one of the corners and down the hallway to the visitor’s locker room, showing no great emotion.
They acted like a team that still had everything to prove, not one that had done any proving. Perfect.
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“I won’t say (we embraced the underdog role),” Jackson countered. “I will say that the lights are brightest. We won on the road last year in both rounds against two very good basketball teams (Denver and San Antonio). We know what we’re capable of doing. When you look at the makeup of this basketball team, individually and collectively they’re fighters. Top to bottom, we’ve got a bunch of guys that, the survey says, were not supposed to be here. I’m not supposed to be coaching. Got no experience. Stephen Curry’s supposed to be retired because of his ankle. David Lee was a loser. Jermaine O’Neal’s supposed to be finished. Harrison Barnes dropped in the draft. Klay Thompson, how can he be sitting with that talent at No. 11 in the draft? And then you look at Draymond Green. A gamer. A gamer. An absolute gamer. I thought Andre Iguodala again gave us great minutes and unfortunately fouled out. But it’s the makeup of this basketball team and I can continue to go on and on throughout my roster. It’s just a bunch of guys that just compete and fight.”On Coach Jackson’s support
Sam Amick of USA Today:
“We’re so well coached. We’re so well put together that we hear no evil, see no evil (when it comes to the criticism). That’s really what it is. We don’t hear all the hoopla around us. We don’t care much about that. We care about winning.”
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That’s where Jackson and Lacob see eye to eye, of course, with the desire to win. But the fourth-year owner wants to win it all, so it is that he has chosen not to hand out long-term security simply because these Warriors are so much better than most Warriors teams of the recent past.
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Yes, their 51-31 regular season record is the best since the 1991-92 Warriors went 55-27 — the last time the Warriors reached the playoffs two consecutive seasons. Yes, his players clearly support and play for him. But like it or not, Jackson, whose cause certainly was not helped with all the assistant coach drama in the Warriors’ world of late, is being judged.
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Lacob will keep watching and waiting. He’ll seek counsel from his revered consultant, legendary player and executive Jerry West, and make the cold and calculated decision that he bought the right to make when his group paid a then-league record $450 million.
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“When I speak to Joe, he likes what we have,” O’Neal said. “But hey, it’s a different era right now. We have a new breed of owners in our league and their patience is a lot shorter. So I don’t know ultimately what his plan is — that’s up to him. He pays the bills. He can do whatever he wants to do with his team. But from the conversations I’ve had with him, he likes Mark.”Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
