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OAKLAND – And two days later, everything was fine again. Type of. The Golden State Warriors will be day-to-day as long as Stephen Curry and Draymond Green are.
Nevertheless, the Portland Trail Blazers stop, slightly tired, did not stop on Friday 125-97 to be completely defeated, in the same way as losing 123-95 at the Oklahoma City Thunder two nights earlier did not was not, and a turn as dramatic as the one represented in the short turn Kevin Durant has explained it better.
"I do not think it will be over when it's over," he said, analyzing not only his brilliant performance, but also that of his friends who broke their series of four consecutive defeats. "I do not believe in fairy tales or anything like that. It will not be over until we begin to impose our will. We must play with more passion and energy (and) I never believe that this will happen eventually. "
Well, it happened Friday night – the kind of energy and purpose, dynamism and intelligence, tactical intelligence and strategic discipline that 's all about. they lost 12 days ago and that they struggled to win back when they went through Time Out From Hell and its aftermath. All the questions of their fragility and lack of depth and the uncertain future that awaits them as a team made them look like a dynasty in the past.
It's almost that. We are still in November and their level is not reasonable for most teams. In addition, Portland had just arrived from Milwaukee after a 43-point loss to the Antlered Freaks, an unreasonably horrible program.
Nevertheless, the Warriors have applied their standard and this game is the first time they have encountered it so thoroughly since perhaps the Phoenix game a month ago.
They defended with zeal and intelligence and, offensively, they moved the ball brilliantly and thought that the burden of the evening should not weigh on Durant and Klay Thompson – although the results (63 points out of 25 shots on 25 more 15 bounces between them) seemed to indicate that.
Instead, they had a mega-useful and effervescent performance of Jordan Bell (who was out of the rotation), a confident and opportunistic filming of Quinn Cook and remarkable contributions from almost everyone. The 11 flights and 48 goals scored on just 85 shots showed how smartly and quickly they turned the defense into an offensive and, in all discernable ways, came out of their fifteen days of torpor.
The Warriors are good for a few games of this kind each year in which they hit a lull that seems to distract them, then free themselves with a start. Specifically, they take embarrassing losses like Wednesday as a reason to recalibrate. They lost 19 games in the championship (including playoffs) by 20 points or more, and their record in subsequent games is 16-3.
Of course, each situation has its own peculiarities and the current fight was made without Curry and Green, a difficult transition for a team working at best and with the spacing required for this rhythm to work better. This last series of indifferent results has been aggravated by Green's confrontation with Durant and the burning desire to look towards the offseason when the season is barely five weeks old, a level of madness that reflects our cultural resistance to boredom. .
In other words, it seemed worse because they had lost four games in a row and looked miserable, as if the season had decided to post a sign "Closed for the winter ".
But from the jump on Friday night, the crowd urged them to return to their true and most attentive personality, and they finally reacted positively, including Durant, who played 37 minutes and at various rotations, including the second group starting the second quarter. Indeed, he played all the second quarter, scoring 14 of his 32 points and scoring a plus-18 to highlight the decisive period of the Warriors 35-17.
"I thought he was playing a brilliant game with every unit he was in," Kerr said. "I do not think it's dramatic. I just think that he was playing so well that he was going to be good in all the units he was in.
And Durant's freedom has created freedom elsewhere, in Thompson, Bell, and Cook.
"We just looked like ourselves," Kerr said. "The level of activity at both ends … it was just a very good night."
Just when hysterics were wondering if there was another one.
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