WARRIORS PRACTICE FACILITY, OAKLAND, CA — It had been 21 straight home victories, dating back to January 27th, 2015, when Derrick Rose willed the Chicago Bulls to a thrilling overtime upset, since the Golden State Warriors had felt defeat in the locker room.
Even then, it was not a game in which the Warriors had played particularly badly. You would have to look to the November 11th, 2014, early season 13-point loss to the San Antonio Spurs for a true scent of “humble pie” in the Golden State locker room.
Klay Thompson said that night, “Our energy needed to be better.”
Stephen Curry said, “It never got to a point where we really had full momentum.”
So it was the first time in a long, long time since the mood in the Warriors locker room had sunk to the doldrums as they had this past Tuesday night, following Golden State’s Game 2 loss at the hands of Mike Conley and the Memphis Grizzlies, who defied the odds and evened the 2015 Western Conference Semifinals series at 1-1.
As Jimmy Spencer wrote in The Sporting News:
When Memphis didn’t comply, the harsh reality of all that’s left to accomplish must have settled in. The result was a locker room that preferred to sit in quiet, except of course for grinning power forward Draymond Green, who looked up in the silence to tell me, “We good, though.”
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It was one of the few light moments in that room after the loss.
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“It was different,” Curry said. “I think we all kind of were just sitting around trying to understand what happened, what we didn’t do right, what we could do better for next game. There wasn’t really a lot said, and I think I’m OK with that. Just kind of feeling the temperament of the team, we all were disappointed, feel like we let a good opportunity to go to 2-0 in this series go.
It was now time for Warriors head coach to call upon his championship pedigree.
“There has never been a team in the history of the league that hasn’t felt like we did yesterday and today,” said Kerr after practice yesterday. “A team that’s won a championship, a team that’s gone on to pour the champagne over your head, I was on five of them and in every one of those runs, there were moments — sometimes several moments — during those runs where you don’t sleep. You wake up feeling like crap.
“It’s hard. You play great teams and they give you problems, and part of what elevates your play to a higher level is the adversity that you have to go through to get there.”
Kerr said he conveyed that message to the team. Green echoed it several minutes later, during his interview session with the media.
“I think only one team in history won every home game in the playoffs,” said Green. “You’re going to lose eventually. It’s about how you bounce back from that. They played an incredible game. We didn’t play very good at all, yet we were still right there, had every opportunity to cut it to four or five points with two minutes to go.”
In 1998 while playing in the NBA Finals, Kerr’s Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls opened the series with a loss at the Utah Jazz, then won three straight to go up 3-1 with a potential series-clincher in Chicago.
This included a 42-point blowout in Game 3.
At the time, the NBA Finals were a 2-3-2 home/away format and the Bulls would be playing a Game 5, with the opportunity to win the championship, on their home floor at the United Center.
As Kerr told Tom Tolbert on KNBR a few hours after practice, “So we’re getting ready to close them out at home in Chicago. The city is planning the parade route, there’s champagne in the locker room, we’re thinking, ‘Alright, we’ve got this; we’ve beaten them three in a row. we blew them out by 42.”
The Bulls went on to lose Game 5 by two points, behind 39 points from Karl Malone and 12 assists from John Stockton.
“And somehow, the next day we were on a flight to Salt Lake City for Game 6 and we didn’t have homecourt advantage anymore,” Kerr added.
“‘Wait a second, holy crap! What just happened?’ That’s the way it is. This is the playoffs. You’re playing great teams,” said Kerr.
“(Spurs head coach) Gregg Popovich says the other guys make millions of dollars to play basketball, too. They’re really good, so you’ve got to respond.
“When you do lose, you feel lousy and you’re wondering what just happened. It’s just part of it. You’ve got to respond.”
“This is a great opportunity for us,” said Green. “This is where you build more character and you show who you really are.”
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via NBA)
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