New Orleans Pelicans Proving to Be Valuable Warm-Up for Golden State Warriors
When the first-round matchup between the Golden State Warriors and New Orleans Pelicans ends, the NBA stratosphere won't be talking about an upset for the ages. It won't be gushing over an upstart Pelicans squad that upended a title favorite. It won't be lamenting a Warriors outfit that almost bent to a distinctly inferior opponent.
It will, however, have just witnessed a postseason battle Golden State didn't see coming yet will be thankful it encountered.
After pulling out a 97-87 win in Game 2 on Monday night, the Warriors are in the driver's seat, up 2-0, with history on their side. According to WhoWins.com, NBA teams with 2-0 leads in best-of-seven series advance nearly 94 percent of the time. It would take an epic meltdown for the Warriors to crash and burn now.
Yet while they're in total control, they aren't actually in total control.
Make no mistake, the Pelicans are going to lose this series. They may get swept, they may push it to five games, but they're going to lose. The Warriors are too good and too deep, mostly operating on incomparable levels even when they're not playing up to their own world-class standards.
But the road to 2-0 has been neither easy nor predictable. The Pelicans are putting up a fight. Three of their starters—Anthony Davis, Tyreke Evans and Eric Gordon—have no prior playoff experience, and they're putting up a fight that will never once be reflected in the series score.
"Two games into the playoffs, and still no sight of the hyper-kinetic, blowout-happy Warriors who stepped on the backs of teams like New Orleans," writes NBA.com's Scott Howard-Cooper. "Two games into the playoffs and two victories, sure (as there is no such thing as a bad win this time of the year), but this has not been a start to match expectations."
Parts of Game 1 remain the only predictable aspects of this matchup. The Warriors exploded from the jump, taking a 15-point lead into the second quarter and an 18-point advantage into halftime. During the third quarter, they led by as many as 25 points.
Just like that, the game—and by extension, the series—was over. The Warriors were overpowering the Pelicans, winning exactly as they were supposed to win: easily.
Then, the fourth quarter happened.
Davis went off for 20 points, and with their scorers under constant pressure, the Warriors shot 25 percent from the floor, watching as their lead was whittled down to four in the final minute. It was a comeback they withstood en route to a 106-99 victory, and one that was more teachable moment than harbinger of weakness.
"It was good for us, good for us to feel that,” head coach Steve Kerr said afterward, per the San Jose Mercury News' Tim Kawakami. “It’s good for us to have to deal with the feeling in the building, especially as a favorite, when a team starts to come back. You have to feel that. That’s all part of it.”
Game 2 offered more of the same. New Orleans capitalized on Golden State's 7-of-22 shooting in the first quarter with 28 points, carrying an 11-point lead into the second. Though the Warriors regained control heading into halftime, an ugly third quarter saw the Pelicans tie it up to begin the fourth.
If not for Klay Thompson's 14-point outburst and Draymond Green's defense on Davis in the final period, that win could be a loss. A 2-0 series edge could be a 1-1 tie. Home-court advantage could be something Golden State needs to recapture.
The worst didn't happen, of course, because these are the Warriors. Their worst-case scenarios look a lot like ceilings, and they have the defense, offense, MVP favorite (Stephen Curry) and supporting cast to manage expectations even when they're not meeting them.
Not meeting them is a good thing in this instance. As CBS Sports' Matt Moore puts it, this was a necessity:
"Think this is good for Warriors. They needed to learn early that it isn’t going to be easy like the regular season was.
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) April 21, 2015"
Meaningful games are essentially uncharted waters for the Warriors. They posted the sixth-best record in league history during the regular season. Their net rating ranks eighth all-time. They spent the entire NBA calendar winning in volume while facing little resistance.
To wit: Not one of Golden State's starters finished in the top 100 in fourth-quarter minutes ahead of the playoffs. Thompson ranked highest on the scale, checking in at 120th.
Resting starters was never a possibility during a Warriors championship run. Maybe they get away with it against a lesser team than New Orleans in the first round. But when it comes to winning the Western Conference and ruling the NBA Finals, the journey is never easy.
That it theoretically could have been isn't exactly reassuring.
Say the Warriors pummel the Pelicans into oblivion, winning all four games by double digits, without ever having to take fourth quarters or even second halves seriously. Their second-round opponent will either be the Memphis Grizzlies or the Portland Trail Blazers, whom they are a combined 5-1 against this season.
If that series were also to end with the Warriors amassing landslide victories at every turn, they would enter the Western Conference Finals without a true test to their resume. And they would presumably do so against either the San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Clippers or Houston Rockets—each of whom posted one of the Association's five-best records between March 1 and regular season's end.
Smoothly paved roads are by no means doomsday obstacles, but actual obstacles and genuine adversity are important. It's good that the Warriors needed to hold New Orleans to 25.7 percent shooting in the second half of Game 2 to secure victory. It's good that they were able to overcome a substandard showing from beyond the arc (9-of-30) and still find ways to score down the stretch.
It's good that, after all this, predictions like those from ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne hold legitimate weight:
"We still get excited at times and do some crazy things," Kerr said of Game 2, per Howard-Cooper. "But I kind of like that fact that we walk that line. It's what makes us who we are."
On so many levels, the Warriors need this experience to make the most of who they are. They need to walk that line between winning and almost losing, because their path to a title will invariably include more dangerous opponents, more blown leads and more deficits.
Down 2-0 in the series, their first-round exit now just about certain, the Pelicans are giving Golden State a peek at the danger such opponents pose. And they're providing that glimpse early, long before the Western Conference Finals and NBA Finals, ensuring the Warriors already know how to win the types of games they cannot afford to lose later.
Unless otherwise cited, all stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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