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The Black State Warriors leaned against an old friend to extend the series: the historic three-point shot.
The Dubs are the defining team of our time, in part because they have returned the basketball court, winning games from the perimeter as opposed to the inside. Check out these crazy numbers of Monday's victory:
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Golden State made 20 3 shooting at 47% beyond the arc.
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The Warriors did just 18 2 shooting 45% inside the bow.
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It was only the third time a team had won a final with more than 3 points scored of 2 and the fourth time a team won a final despite 18 buckets or less.
The Dubs caught fire in downtown when they needed it and became only the second team in the history of the finals to accumulate 20 3 or more in a match. As a reminder, the Detroit Pistons in 2004 scored 21 points in their win of the five-game series against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004.
These times are long gone, thanks in part to two world-class elite fencers seeking their third consecutive world title.
The two Splash brothers enter tonight's match 6 (8 pm Eastern Time on ABC / ESPN App) with 20 shots on goal this series, but Klay Thompson has made 35 attempts against 35 for Stephen Curry. Thompson saved his life in the four games he played in this series. He missed match 3 with an elongated thigh. He scored 57% of his 3 goals. The rest of the warriors combined to make only 33%.
Of course, Thompson is an excellent shooter – a quick look at his firing chart this season proves it – but in his five years of existence, Thompson has turned out to be a monster in the biggest games in the playoffs.
Thompson's resume for the big game is as good as any other player in the league, and his shot at the right time once again proves to be the best of his class in this final. In five games of this series, six players have attempted at least 50 moves. All but one of them have an effective field goal percentage of between 46.0 and 51.4. Thompson has a% eFG of 65.8.
It's getting crazy.
Per second, of the 13 players who have tried at least 20 shots in this final, Thompson takes the toughest looks. Based on the location of the shot, the distance of the defender and other factors related to the situation, Second Spectrum estimates the% eFG of each shot in each match. Their model suggests that Thompson should have the lowest eFG percentage of all volume shooters in this series. Instead, it is the highest of one kilometer – its actual% eFG is light years away from all the others.
In other words, the filming of Thompson is both the most effective and the most impressive of the series.
The best example of this may have come in the fifth game, when he turned a post-up game into one of the strangest 3 of the playoff series.
In simple terms, Thompson is a man on fire. Even if he goes to 0-of-15 on a distance of 3 points in the sixth match, he will still achieve 40% of his 3 in this series. He's crazy, especially since he's been bullied.
Is it sustainable? Maybe not to this level. EFG% in Thompson playoffs since the start of this dynastic series in 2015 is 53.9%, about 5 points better than expected given the quality of the shots. But the Warriors need only Thompson to continue shooting at this rate twice more. They simply can not afford a bad game from Steph or Klay.
A closer look at the table above reveals that the four least effective markers in this series are all warriors, while seven of the nine best are raptors. If the Warriors are to win the sixth game, not only must the Splash brothers be productive, but the Golden State players must also be better. The Raptors are averaging 111.0 points per game in this series, and while Klay and Steph have a combined average of 57.4 points per game, it's hard to imagine tackling the Toronto offense.
Toronto knows it too, and without the wounded The Raptors will devote their best defensive resources to slowing down Kevin's perimeter attack.
Thanks to the injuries, this is the finest team of Warriors we've seen in five years. It is also true that this Raptors team is the best defense that the Dubs faced in the finals of their dynasty. In a game-play league, it's an unfortunate combination for Golden State.
But if Klay showed us something in this series, it is that champions know how to defy expectations.
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