NBA Finals Headed For Long Series After Warriors ‘Play With Desperation In Game 2

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NBA Finals Headed For Long Series After Warriors ‘Play With Desperation In Game 2

The NBA got its wish — a Finals series now tied 1-1 and a potentially long battle within the offing.  

Warriors superstar Stephen Curry placed on a third-quarter long-distance fireworks show until their new stud, Jordan Poole, tried to top it along with his own 3-point party. 

NBA Finals Headed For Long Series

The officials weren’t visiting to ruin this bash — ensuring to not issue an automatic ejection to the Warriors’ best defender, Draymond Green thought he deserved one.  

In the final minute of a 35-14 blowout of a 3rd period, Poole’s buzzer-beater sailed in from the Bay Bridge. The soldiers got up 87-64 after three quarters and also the new Chase Center was bedlam because the Warriors seized their first-ever Finals win within the building, 107-88, over Boston.  

NBA Finals Headed For Long Series After Warriors ‘Play With Desperation In Game 2

Poole’s bomb measured 38 feet. Curry’s face lit up. He embraced Poole as if they had just won another championship. They’re three wins away, but Boston has lost their home-court advantage.  

The Finals are deadlocked. The longer this show goes on, the higher for NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s coffers. But it absolutely was another blowout game in an endless postseason of blowouts — a problem nobody can quite explain.  

Curry made certain the series headed back to Boston tied due to his 13-point third quarter, lofting 3-point dart after 3-point dart. Curry shredded Boston’s vaunted switch-on-every-pick-and-roll defense. He finished with 29 points in 32 minutes to prepare for his Game 1 late fade.  

The Warriors required a classic Curry performance as well as a vintage Green performance They got both and they got lucky, too.  

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As NBA Finals history shows, Green always pushes the envelope, and he nearly got ejected late within the second quarter. The officiating crew — led by Tony Brown — gets the largest assist of Game 2.  

Sunday, Green picked up a technical for shoving Grant Williams after the whistle within the period of play.  

Afterward, a fallen Brown said Green “put his legs on my head” and “then he tried to drag my pants down.”  

“It was an illegal play,’’ Brown said. “They got away with plenty.”  

The referees, perhaps knowing a Green ejection would be crippling, didn’t issue Green his second technical.  

The look-the-other-way technique was praised as “excellent officiating” by commentator Jeff Van Gundy.

“No, I wasn’t shocked there was a double technical because of the circumstances,” Boston coach Ime Udoka remarked later.

Udoka spoke up during the third-quarter assault. After two straight non-calls on consecutive possessions when Green and Kevon Looney got away with obvious fouls, Udoka pulled down his mask and unchained with a stream of invectives at the officials, drawing his own technology. Udoka said it absolutely was a built-up explosion. 

“I allow them to understand how I felt throughout the sport in an exceedingly demonstrative way by choice to induce a technicality,” Udoka said.  

Green was spared, but that won’t always be the case for the remainder of June. Green’s temper has to be under control in Boston. He won’t get the advantage of the doubt again.  

“For me to sit down back and say, oh, I’m visiting, push it to the current edge and take a look to tug back, that doesn’t work,” Green said. “I have to be compelled to be me. So with the primary tech, that’s not stopping me from being aggressive.”  

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With the soldiers needing a win to induce Silver’s Finals back, not, of course, Green was spared an automatic ejection. The referees won’t be that nice going forward. The soldiers will need Green to remain out of trouble in Beantown. 

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