Golden State returns to the NBA Finals: the Warriors, carried by Klay Thompson as in its finest hours, won (120-110) a fourth success against the Mavericks, despite the late start of Luka Doncic, Thursday in the play-offs .
After two seasons of brooding, treating injuries, but also rebuilding a competitive workforce, the Californian franchise, which dominated the championship in the second half of the previous decade, is making a tremendous comeback.
She will play her sixth final in eight years. Like Michael Jordan’s Bulls in the 1990s, but each time with a champion ring on their finger (1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998). The Warriors were crowned in 2015, 2017, 2018 and defeated in 2016 then in 2019.
Towel on his head and a smirk, Stephen Curry could just savor the moment while the last seconds passed, his gaze lost in this glorious past that he can once again touch with his finger.
“It is a blessing for us to return to our place. It’s not the ultimate goal yet, but we have to celebrate this moment, after everything we’ve been through in the last three years,” said the point guard, the first recipient of the all-new Magic Johnson Trophy, rewarding the Finals MVP. Western Conference.
With Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, they will aim for a 4th title, from June 2, to continue a saga, which many believed stopped three years ago after the loss against Toronto and the dissolution of their “big 3” with the departure of Kevin Durant in Brooklyn. It will be against Boston or Miami, still struggling in the Eastern Conference, the Celtics leading 3-2 with a sixth game already decisive at home on Friday.
Like revenge on fate, it was Thompson who paved the way for his team to the final, he who had gone through hell with a ruptured cruciate ligament in his left knee during the fatal game N.6 against the Raptors in 2019, before undergoing a second one to the right Achilles tendon a year later.
Returning in January after two and a half years of treatment, the back is no longer quite the serial shooter he was, this player capable of planting 14 baskets behind the arc in a match. But the 8 (out of 16) he managed, for 32 points in total, testify to a remarkable performance and an intact ability to respond to major events.
In its wake, the Warriors, whose coach Steve Kerr, continues to hammer, rightly for the moment, that they “have kept the DNA of champions within them”, remembered how to end a series.
However, Curry did not particularly show himself to his advantage (15 pts at 5/17, 9 assists), unlike Draymond Green (17 pts, 9 assists, 6 rebounds) aggressive as always, skillful as rarely (6/7 ). Andrew Wiggins (18 pts, 10 rebounds), Jordan Poole (16 pts, 6 assists) also contributed.
And what about Keyvon Looney (10 pts), revelation of these play-offs, still ultra-dominant in the racket with 18 rebounds captured, including 7 offensive? Two of them were crucial in the money-time, because they offered two banderillas behind the arc to Thompson and Curry, to repel the final assaults from Dallas.
Because if the Mavs were 25 units behind in the third quarter, they came back to -8 in this same period, thanks to the spectacular awakening of Luka Doncic, author of 15 points after having scored only 6 in the first period.
“Luka Magic” (28 pts, 9 rbds 6 assists), on which all the Warriors defended fiercely, did his best in the last quarter, until he managed a tightrope walker’s basket from behind the panel. But it was not enough.
No more than the 19 award-winning baskets made by the Mavericks, including five by Spencer Dinwiddie alone (25 pts), still excellent off the bench. Because Golden State had several strings to its bow, experience as a bonus.
