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    Stephen Curry’s Golden State Is the NBA’s Newest Dynasty

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    Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green won four N.B.A. championship teams in eight years.BOSTON — The N.B.A.’s dynasties share certain commonalities that have helped them tip the scales from being run-of-the-mill championship teams to those remembered for decades.Among them: Each has had a generational player in contention for Mount Rushmore at his position.The 1980s had Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics battling Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Los Angeles Lakers. Michael Jordan’s Bulls ruled the ’90s, then passed a flickering torch — a championship here and there, but never twice in a row — to the San Antonio Spurs with Tim Duncan.Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant sneaked in a Lakers three-peat at the start of the 2000s.And then there were … none. There were other all-time players — LeBron James, of course. And James’s Heat came close to the top tier by becoming champions in 2012 and 2013, but fell apart soon after.Dynasties require more than that.Patience. Money. Owners willing to spend. And above all, it seems, the ability to “break” basketball and change the way the game is played or perceived. That’s why there were no new dynasties until the union of Golden State and Stephen Curry.Curry said the fourth championshp “hits different.”Elsa/Getty ImagesDonning a white N.B.A. championship baseball cap late Thursday, Curry pounded a table with both hands in response to the first question of the night from the news media.“We’ve got four championships,” Curry said, adding, “This one hits different, for sure.”Curry repeated the phrase “hits different” four times during the media session — perhaps appropriately so. Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala had just won an N.B.A. championship together for the fourth time in eight years.“It’s amazing because none of us are the same,” Green said. “You usually clash with people when you’re alike. The one thing that’s constant for us is winning is the most important thing. That is always the goal.”Golden State has won with ruthless, methodical efficiency, like Duncan’s Spurs. San Antonio won five championships between 1999 and 2014. Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker were All-Stars, though Duncan was in a league of his own. Their championships were spread out — Parker and Ginobili weren’t in the N.B.A. for the first one — but they posed a constant threat because of their disciplined excellence.Tim Duncan, left, Manu Ginobili, center, and Tony Parker won four championships together on the San Antonio Spurs. Duncan won a fifth, in 1999.Eric Gay/Associated PressDuncan, left, Ginobili, center, and Parker at Parker’s jersey retirement ceremony in 2019.Eric Gay/Associated Press“Steph reminds me so much of Tim Duncan,” said Golden State Coach Steve Kerr, who won two championships as Duncan’s teammate. “Totally different players. But from a humanity standpoint, talent standpoint, humility, confidence, this wonderful combination that just makes everybody want to win for him.”Unlike Golden State, the influence of Duncan’s Spurs is more subtle, which is appropriate for a team not known for its flash. Several of Coach Gregg Popovich’s assistants have carried the team-oriented culture they saw in San Antonio to other teams as successful head coaches, including Memphis’s Taylor Jenkins, Boston’s Ime Udoka and Milwaukee’s Mike Budenholzer. Another former Spurs assistant, Mike Brown, was Kerr’s assistant for the last six years. For San Antonio, sacrifice has mattered above all else, whether in sharing the ball with precision on offense or in Ginobili’s willingness to accept a bench role in his prime, likely costing himself individual accolades.Johnson’s Showtime Lakers embraced fast-paced, creative basketball. The Bulls and Bryant’s Lakers popularized the triangle offense favored by their coach, Phil Jackson. O’Neal was so dominant that the league changed the rules because of him. (The N.B.A. changed rules because of Jordan, too.)Even so, Golden State may have shifted the game more than all of them, having been at the forefront of the 3-point revolution in the N.B.A. Curry’s 3-point shooting has become so ubiquitous that players at all levels try to be like him, much to the frustration of coaches.“When I go back home to Milwaukee and watch my A.A.U. team play and practice, everybody wants to be Steph,” Golden State center Kevon Looney said. “Everyone wants to shoot 3s, and I’m like, ‘Man, you’ve got to work a little harder to shoot like him.’ ”Michael Jordan, right, and Scottie Pippen, left, won six championships as the Chicago Bulls dominated the N.B.A. in the 1990s.Andy Hayt/NBA, via ESPNThe defining distinction for Golden State is not just Curry, who has more career 3-pointers than anyone in N.B.A. history. The team also selected Green in the second round of the 2012 N.B.A. draft. In a previous era, he likely would have been considered too short at 6-foot-6 to play forward, and not fast enough to be a guard. Now, teams search to find their own version of Green — an exceptional passer who can defend all five positions. And they often fail.The dynasties also had coaches adept at managing egos, like Jackson in Chicago and Los Angeles, and Popovich in San Antonio.Golden State has Kerr, who incidentally is also a common denominator in three dynasties: He won three championships as a player with the Bulls, the two with the Spurs, and now he has four more as Curry’s head coach.In today’s N.B.A., Kerr is a rarity. He has led Golden State for eight seasons, while in much of the rest of the league, coaches don’t last that long. The Lakers recently fired Frank Vogel just two seasons after he helped them win a championship. Tyronn Lue coached the Cavaliers to a championship in 2016 in his first season as head coach, and was gone a little over two seasons later — despite having made it at least to the conference finals three years in a row.The 2000s Lakers with Kobe Bryant, left, and Shaquille O’Neal, right, were the last team to win three championships in a row. Jordan’s Bulls did that twice in the 1990s.MATT CAMPBELL/AFP via Getty ImagesSince Golden State hired Kerr in 2014, all but two other teams have changed coaches: San Antonio, which still has Popovich, and Miami, led by Erik Spoelstra.In a decade of rampant player movement, Golden State has been able to rely on continuity to regain its status as king of the N.B.A. But that continuity isn’t the result of a fairy-tale bond between top-level athletes who want to keep winning together. Not totally, anyway.Golden State has a structural advantage that many franchises today can’t or choose not to have: an owner in Joe Lacob who is willing to spend gobs of money on the team, including hundreds of millions of dollars in luxury tax to have the highest payroll in the N.B.A. This means that Golden State has built a dynasty in part because its top stars are getting paid to stay together, rather than relying on the fraught decisions of management about who to keep.The N.B.A.’s salary cap system is designed to not let this happen. David Stern, the former commissioner of the N.B.A., said a decade ago that to achieve parity, he wanted teams to “share in players” and not amass stars — hence the steep luxury tax penalties for Lacob. Compare Golden State’s approach to that of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who in 2012 traded a young James Harden rather than pay him for an expensive contract extension. The Thunder could’ve had a dynasty of their own with Harden, Russell Westbrook and — a key part of two Golden State championships — Kevin Durant.Either one of the leg injuries Thompson sustained in recent years could have ended his career.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAnd there’s another factor that every dynasty needs: luck.Golden State was able to sign Durant in 2016 because of a temporary salary cap spike. Winning a championship, or several, requires good health, which is often out of the team’s control. Thompson missed two straight years because of leg injuries, but didn’t appear to suffer setbacks this year after he returned. Of course, Golden State has also seen some bad luck, such as injuries to Thompson and Durant in the 2019 finals, which may have cost the team that series.The N.B.A.’s legacy graveyard is full of “almosts” and “could haves.” Golden State simply has — now for a fourth time. There may be more runs left for Curry, Thompson and Green, but as of Thursday night, their legacy was secure. They’re not chasing other dynasties for legitimacy. Golden State is the one being chased now.“I don’t like to put a number on things and say, ‘Oh, man, we can get five or we can get six,’” Green said. “We’re going to get them until the wheels fall off.” More

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      N.B.A. Finals: Boston Celtics Take On Golden State Warriors

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      Golden State has been to the finals six times in eight years. But the young stars of the Celtics may finally be ready for their big moment.It would be Stephen Curry’s fourth N.B.A. championship, or Jayson Tatum’s first. It would be a comeback story for the ages for Klay Thompson, or a fairy-tale ending to the debut of the first-time head coach Ime Udoka.Much is at stake in the 2022 N.B.A. finals for Golden State and the Boston Celtics, two teams with something to prove. For Golden State, it’s a chance to defy the odds against reviving a dynasty after two seasons away from the spotlight. For Boston and its lineup of rising stars, this is, as they say, when legends are made.Here is a look at what to expect in the N.B.A. finals, which begin Thursday in San Francisco.Third-seeded Golden State has home-court advantage over second-seeded Boston because of its better regular-season record.Experience may not be everything.Golden State during the parade for its most recent championship, in 2018.Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressAfter the Boston Celtics won Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, their words about facing Golden State in the N.B.A. finals conveyed a blend of confidence and deference.“We know we’re going up against a great team with the Warriors. Great players, great organization,” Celtics guard Marcus Smart said. “They have the track record to prove it. They know exactly what it takes. They’ve been here. They’re vets. We know we’ve got a long road in front of us, but we’re up for the challenge.”These finals are marked by a gap in experience, with one team well seasoned in championship basketball and another filled with newcomers to this stage. Golden State has five players who have made multiple finals appearances — Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, Kevon Looney and Andre Iguodala. The Celtics have no players who have made it this far before now.Part of that is a function of age. Boston’s roster is filled with players in their 20s, while Golden State is a group of 30-somethings whose lives have changed since their first finals appearances.“Just being able to balance even just, like, family life,” Curry said after Game 5 of the Western Conference finals. “I’m blessed to have kids that are now 9, 6 and 3. Like, when I was back in ’14, ’15, chasing those playoffs, just a different vibe in terms of everything that’s going on in life.”Jayson Tatum, left, and Jaylen Brown, right are still finding themselves as the leaders of the Boston Celtics.Derick Hingle/Associated PressSmart was a 21-year-old rookie in 2015, the first time Curry, Green and Thompson won an N.B.A. championship. Jayson Tatum, who was named the Eastern Conference finals most valuable player this year, was in 11th grade. Their teammate Jaylen Brown had just finished high school and was headed to play college basketball at the University of California, Berkeley — just 11 miles from where Golden State played at the time.By the 2015 championship, with the exception of Looney, whom the Warriors drafted a few weeks after winning the title, Golden State’s return finals participants had all been through years of seasoning and early playoff exits.The 2021-22 Celtics have similarly spent the past few years learning how to win in the playoffs, and dealing with the bitterness of losing. Boston has been to the playoffs every year since 2015 and made it to the conference finals four times.But Golden State’s journey shows that finals experience isn’t everything.When the Warriors won the 2015 championship, they faced a Cleveland Cavaliers team led by LeBron James. James was making his fifth consecutive finals appearance and sixth overall. But he couldn’t stop Golden State from winning the series in six games.But James was also relatively new to that team. The depth of Golden State’s experience will help carry the team this month.Prediction: Golden State in six.Draymond Green is Golden State’s ‘emotional leader.’Draymond Green’s strength, and weakness, is his intensity.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesStephen Curry has famously drained more 3-pointers than anyone in history. Klay Thompson is still basking in his triumphant return from two cataclysmic injuries. And Jordan Poole, out of the morass of Golden State’s two seasons on dynastic hiatus, has emerged as one of the most dynamic young scorers in the league.As the Warriors return to the N.B.A. finals, several players have fueled their run. But is it possible amid all the team’s pyrotechnics that Draymond Green — the team’s highly opinionated, referee-tormenting spokesman — is somehow being overlooked? OK, maybe not. But in his 10th season, Green is making his sixth trip to the finals, and it is no coincidence. He is the defense-minded, pass-first force who binds his teammates in more ways than one.“Our emotional leader,” Coach Steve Kerr said.And Green has seldom, if ever, played better basketball than he has this postseason. In Golden State’s closeout win over the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference finals, he collected 17 points, 9 assists and 6 rebounds while shooting 6 of 7 from the field. He quarterbacked the offense. He was a menace on defense. He used up five of his six personal fouls.He also avoided partaking in many of the extracurriculars that had hampered him in the past — at least until after the game, when he spoke about facing the Celtics with a championship at stake. The problem was that the Celtics were still playing the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. In fact, the Heat would force a Game 7 before falling short. But in Green’s mind, he was never wrong.“I thought they were the better team, and clearly I wasn’t far off,” Green said this week on San Francisco’s KGMZ-FM, Golden State’s radio broadcast partner.In his own way, Green was a source of stability for the organization as the team labored with injuries in recent seasons. He mentored his younger teammates. He was in uniform when Curry and Thompson were absent. He acknowledged that it wasn’t always easy: He was accustomed to competing for championships, and suddenly Golden State had the worst record in the league.Now, back alongside Curry and Thompson, Green has another title in sight.“I can’t say that I thought coming into this season, like, ‘Yo, we’re going to win a championship,’ or, ‘We’re going to be in the N.B.A. finals,’ ” Green said. “But I always believed with us three that we have a chance.”Prediction: More rested and more experienced, Golden State wins the series in six games.They’re both great on defense, but different on offense.Celtics Coach Ime Udoka, left, helped Boston become the N.B.A.’s best defensive team. Marcus Smart, right, won the Defensive Player of the Year Award.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesThe connections between Celtics Coach Ime Udoka and Golden State Coach Steve Kerr — both former N.B.A. role players — are numerous. Both led their teams to the finals in their first seasons as a head coach, Kerr in 2014-15, when Golden State won the championship, and Udoka this year.They are also connected to San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich. Udoka was an assistant on the Spurs from 2012 to 2019, which resulted in a championship in 2014. Udoka also played three seasons for the Spurs, while Kerr played four seasons in San Antonio and won two championships. Both also worked with Popovich on the U.S. men’s national basketball team.Popovich’s influence is clear. Udoka and Kerr have preached the value of a staunch defense. Boston and Golden State were the two best defensive teams in the N.B.A. during the regular season. And like Popovich, the coaches are willing to bluntly criticize players publicly.Where they diverge is offensively.Udoka has installed a methodical, slower offense. The Celtics frequently run isolations, ranking near the top of the N.B.A. during the regular season, while Golden State was near the bottom.In part, that comes down to personnel: Boston’s two best players, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, are adept at getting to the rim and breaking defenses down one-on-one but less so at passing. In addition, the Celtics start Marcus Smart at point guard, and he isn’t a traditional pass-first guard.Kerr, meanwhile, has long preached an egalitarian offense hinging on ball movement — so much so that Kevin Durant, after leaving Golden State for the Nets in 2019, complained that Kerr’s offense had been limiting. This season, Golden State led the N.B.A. in scoring off cuts to the basket, while the Celtics were just around league average. Golden State also was second in the league in total passes.There’s another difference, too. Kerr is more willing to experiment with lineups. He has given significant minutes to rookies such as Moses Moody and Jonathan Kuminga, shuffling them in and out of the rotation. In the playoffs, Kerr gave the 19-year-old Kuminga three starts in the semifinal series against the Memphis Grizzlies. Moody, 20, was in the rotation against the Dallas Mavericks in the conference finals.Udoka has preferred to keep his rotations fairly predictable, particularly in the playoffs, rarely reaching down the Celtics’ bench even in the case of foul trouble.Prediction: Celtics in six. Their defense is well designed to chase Stephen Curry around. More

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      Kevon Looney Leads Golden State in Comeback Win Over Dallas Mavericks

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      Looney had the best night of his career to fuel his team’s comeback from 19 points down to the Dallas Mavericks in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.SAN FRANCISCO — The day before Kevon Looney produced the best game of his professional career, he sat in a hallway at Chase Center in San Francisco, thinking about the way his role had changed since Golden State drafted him in 2015.This was a team known for its smaller lineups; that’s how it had won a championship that year. At 6-foot-9, and despite a wingspan of more than seven feet, Looney was considered undersized.Looney chuckled at the thought, then he considered it a little bit more.“The league’s kind of changed, and now I’m more the traditional center now in the N.B.A.,” Looney said, as he thought about the way people sometimes talk about Golden State. “So it kind of is weird to me. Sometimes it feels like a slap in the face when they’re like, ‘They don’t have any size.”Looney typically is not the most talked-about member of the Warriors. He was drafted less than two weeks after Golden State won its first championship with Steve Kerr as coach, and was part of the team for four consecutive appearances in the N.B.A. finals and two championships. After overcoming early injury woes, he became a critical part of Golden State’s roster, and this year was one of only five players leaguewide to play in all 82 regular-season games.In the playoffs this year, Golden State has been able to count on him. He didn’t start in Games 1 through 5 of their Western Conference semifinal series against the Memphis Grizzlies, then started and grabbed 22 rebounds in the Game 6 win that clinched the series.Golden State turned to Looney in Game 6 of its series against the Grizzlies, and his play was crucial. He grabbed 22 rebounds in the win.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesOn Friday night in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals series against the Dallas Mavericks, Looney scored 21 points with 12 rebounds in the 126-117 comeback win. It was the first time since his only season at U.C.L.A. that he had scored more than 20 points in a game. It was also the first time a Warriors center had scored 20 points with at least 10 rebounds in the playoffs since 1977.“We see the work that he’s put in to make that a reality,” Golden State guard Stephen Curry said. “Now, in the playoffs, just taking that next step. He brings a lot of joy to what we do in the locker room. I’ll call him, like, the muse in the locker room. He kind of just has a great demeanor about him. He’s the bridge between the vets and the young guys. Pretty awesome to see him adapt to that role.”Kerr called Looney “everybody’s favorite guy.”Forward Draymond Green called him a master of professionalism.“The same professional he is today, he was when he came in the league,” Green said.Looney may have projected professionalism and levelheadedness to Green, but the truth was that when Looney was drafted, he was a wide-eyed 19-year-old just trying not to break anything.This team was riding high after its championship, and his job was to fit in, not to stand out. As the only rookie, he didn’t have anyone with common experiences to talk to about what that was like and what he should do.“Definitely was intimidating,” Looney said.That July, he was in Las Vegas after playing in the N.B.A.’s Summer League tournament, where teams field rosters of their young players and N.B.A. hopefuls. The veterans on his team were in Las Vegas for a players’ union awards show, and one night Andre Iguodala texted, asking him to bring over some doughnuts.“It’s like 1 in the morning,” Looney said, laughing. “I didn’t even know if he was serious. First day, I’m already scared. I don’t want to mess up on my first day.”He attended the awards show, but when the team went up onstage together, he said he was too shy to join them. That shyness persisted during the early part of the season as the team went 24-0 on its way to an N.B.A.-record 73 wins.“They used to joke that I didn’t talk for the first six months,” Looney said.In addition to requesting doughnut deliveries at 1 a.m., Iguodala took Looney under his wing and helped him adapt. Green would invite Looney to spend time with him just to make him feel more comfortable in this new setting.That helped in the locker room, but Looney would experience other challenges. He had hip surgery before his rookie year began. Then he had another hip injury in his second season.Looney had never missed a game in college or high school, and called the injuries “devastating.”“We didn’t know what we had,” Kerr said, noting that the team did not pick up Looney’s contract option for a fourth season because he had not played much. He continued: “And then his third year he has a great year, it’s like, uh oh, we might lose this guy.”Looney is relishing the chance to have an impact during the playoffs. He had 10 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists in Game 1 against Dallas, also a Golden State victory.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLooney was keenly aware of the questions the organization had about him, but he took solace in the support from his teammates.“Always got the respect from my teammates, and that made me keep going, that made me feel good about myself and know that I’m doing the right thing,” Looney said. “Even if the fans — you might have a bad game, the fans might say you’re not good enough, somebody might say you’re not good enough — but when you’ve got your teammates saying, like, ‘Man I don’t care what the stat lines say, I want to be out there with Loon,’ it’s a great honor.”Looney was inactive throughout the playoffs for his first two seasons. But in his third season, he began to have a significant role for the Warriors and contributed to their 2017-18 championship run. He often defended the best players.Now 26, he’s a veteran on a team that has incorporated young guys who are experiencing their first playoff runs. Looney knows what that felt like and tries to help guide them through the process.And if Golden State wins another championship this year, it will feel a little bit more special, given his contributions.“To make an impact, and start a lot of these games, playoff games, be there for the team, have some big roles in playoff moments, this’ll mean a lot to me,” Looney said. “It’ll just be kind of like the cherry on top to be able to close it out and win and be there for my team.” More

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      Steph Curry Returns, and Golden State Beats the Nuggets

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      Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, Golden State’s championship core, are back together in the postseason for the first time since 2019.Klay Thompson was splashing 3-pointers. Draymond Green was making stops and deftly finding open cutters. Stephen Curry drew several defenders any time he touched the ball.The threesome who redefined basketball en route to winning multiple championships with the Golden State Warriors reunited in the playoffs on Saturday for the first time since 2019. And like in many games of that era, the high-octane Warriors were dominant, defeating the Denver Nuggets in the opener of their first-round playoff matchup, 123-107.In a surprise move, Curry began the game on the bench. In his place, Coach Steve Kerr started the third-year guard Jordan Poole, who made a leap this year. The move appeared to be aimed at keeping Curry on a strict minutes limit. This was his first game since March 16, when he injured his left foot against the Boston Celtics.The swap paid off. Poole was exceptional in his first career playoff game, scoring 30 points — a game high — on 9 for 13 shooting, electrifying the Chase Center crowd in San Francisco. He played as if he had long been a mainstay of postseason basketball. At one point, he did a dance after scoring a difficult basket. It was that kind of night. On a team of stars who had played on some of the most talented teams in league history, it was a 22-year-old selected with the 28th pick of the 2019 draft who stole the show as Golden State attempted to recapture the N.B.A. throne.Jordan Poole has been a key source of offense for Golden State this season, with injuries keeping top stars off the court for months at a time. He had 30 points on Saturday.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images“Jordan Poole, wow, what a playoff debut,” Thompson raved to reporters after the game, adding: “We should be very grateful for Jordan’s development and the type of player he’s become because he’s just incredible. I mean, what a star in the making.”The last time Curry came off the bench during the playoffs was May 1, 2018, the second game of the Western Conference semifinals against the New Orleans Pelicans, when he was returning from a knee injury. Saturday against Denver was only the third playoff game of Curry’s career in which he played but didn’t start.He entered the contest about halfway through the first quarter to a loud ovation. Almost immediately, Curry made his presence felt, finding Thompson for an open 3-pointer from the corner and sneaking a pass between two defenders to an open Green for a dunk. Otherwise, he struggled, shooting 5 for 13 from the field for 16 points. But his presence alone still drew outsize attention from the Nuggets, and the Warriors outscored Denver by 17 points with Curry on the floor.“It was nice to feel the playoff vibe again, and obviously it is different coming off the bench and trying to make the most of the minutes that are appropriate right now,” Curry said.Poole’s strong play presents a dilemma — of the good kind — for Kerr going forward. With Curry back, can he send Poole to the bench for the rest of the playoffs?“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Kerr said.Poole’s strong play will give Kerr more options for the rest of the series. For one thing, he can deploy a three-guard lineup of Curry, Thompson and Poole — three playmakers and shooters. It’s reminiscent of the closing small-ball lineups that the Warriors used to deploy at their best during their championship runs of the last decade — except with Poole playing the part of Andre Iguodala, who now has a smaller role.An added benefit of Poole’s emergence is that it allows Golden State to ease Curry’s ramp up coming off the foot injury. Kerr declined to say whether Curry would come off the bench again for Game 2 on Monday.Klay Thompson had 19 points, including 5 of 10 3-pointers, in Golden State’s win over the Denver Nuggets on Saturday. He injured his knee in his last playoff game, in 2019.Jeff Chiu/Associated PressThompson, meanwhile, looked like the player he was before he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during the 2019 N.B.A. finals. He moved swiftly to find open looks for himself, en route to five 3-pointers and 19 points overall.“Before the tip I thought about all the days in the gym, the days in a doctor’s office, on the surgery table and then just to be flying up and down the court, knocking shots down and playing solid defense, it was a surreal moment for me,” Thompson said after the game.Denver, on the other hand, will have to go back to the drawing board.Golden State was able to flummox the Nuggets’ top star, Nikola Jokic, who is the favorite to win his second Most Valuable Player Award. The Warriors constantly forced Jokic into difficult shots and frustrated him with a steady stream of double teams. They also attempted to tire him out defensively by setting up possessions with him as the primary defender. On possession after possession, Jokic was sent scurrying after the speedy Golden State ballhandlers.“They were just better than us in every aspect of the game,” Jokic said.But the Warriors also have Green, who won the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2016-17. He was able to do something most defenders can’t: guard Jokic one on one for multiple possessions, freeing his Golden State teammates to stay attached to other Nuggets players Jokic might pass to.By the time the fourth quarter came around, Jokic looked exhausted. He finished with 25 points, 10 rebounds and 6 assists. He went to the free throw line two times, despite attempting 25 shots. Denver appeared to be frustrated with the officiating.“I think there were some times where, you know, his jersey was getting pulled out a lot,” Nuggets Coach Mike Malone said. “So I don’t know. We got to see how they’re guarding him and how we can make them pay for how they’re guarding him.”Golden State’s Draymond Green had 12 points, 6 rebounds and 9 assists against Denver on Saturday. He missed dozens of regular-season games with a back injury.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesWhen Jokic was asked about the officiating after the game by a reporter, he said, “My friend, I think I’m going to get fined if I answer.”The playoff opener was a return to the postseason spotlight for the core Golden State players who won championships in 2015, 2017 and 2018. Curry, Green, Thompson and Iguodala are the top four leaders in franchise history for postseason games played. But this was the first time, in large part because of injuries, that the Warriors had made the playoffs since 2019, when the team lost in the finals to the Toronto Raptors in six games. The only time all four of them played in the same game this year was on Jan. 9, Thompson’s first game back after missing two seasons with leg injuries. Green only started that game briefly, to support Thompson, before sitting the rest of the night.Both teams had significant injury issues during the season. Green missed more than two months of the regular season for Golden State with a back injury. For Denver, Michael Porter Jr. and Jamal Murray missed most or all of the season; they often can take the pressure off Jokic for playmaking.This was Denver’s fourth straight year making the playoffs; the team has made it out of the first round each of the past three seasons.There is a source of solace for Denver: In each of those series, the Nuggets lost the first game. The Nuggets will attempt to tie the seven-game series at one game apiece on Monday. But they looked overmatched on Saturday night.“We can’t beat ourselves and the Warriors in the same game,” Malone said. “We did that tonight.” More

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      LeBron James and Stephen Curry Test Different Paths Back to N.B.A. Peak

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      James’s Los Angeles Lakers revamped their roster in a bid for another championship. For Golden State and Curry, familiar faces were just fine.LOS ANGELES — On the cusp of his 19th N.B.A. season, Carmelo Anthony belongs to a new team but harbors the same ambitions: winning his first championship. In that regard, he is not alone on the Los Angeles Lakers, a collection of veterans who will form one of the league’s most curious experiments.“We have too much experience on this team to think anything other than we’ll figure it out,” Anthony said. “But it all takes time.”After a winless preseason, the Lakers will get going in an official capacity on Tuesday night, when they play their season opener against the Golden State Warriors, a franchise that has recently gone about its business in a decidedly different way.While the Lakers have been a tear-down project — LeBron James, who signed with the team in 2018, is the longest-tenured player on the roster — Golden State has been busy remodeling while keeping intact the essential core from its not-so-distant championship era, all in the hope of staging a resurrection with the help of some new pieces.Two teams. Two approaches. And an early-season, but much-anticipated, litmus test at Staples Center on the viability of each.“I think we’ll be ready,” Anthony said. “You can feel it.”Russell Westbrook, at 32, adds a scoring punch to a team with several old-for-the-N.B.A. veterans.Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressThe Warriors — remember them? — are running it back with Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and, eventually, Klay Thompson, whom the team expects to return by late December or early January after he missed the past two seasons with injuries. Thompson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the 2019 finals, then ruptured his right Achilles’ tendon last November.“It doesn’t work without Klay,” Curry said in an interview last week. “So there’s definitely anticipation. And we feel like we’ll have three seasons in one this year: this first chapter until he gets back, reintegrating him into the fold, and then the playoff chase down the stretch. So there’s a lot to look forward to.”Without Thompson — and largely without Curry, who broke his hand and missed all but five games — Golden State hibernated through the 2019-20 season, finishing with the worst record in the league. Last season, as the team continued to groom prospects like Jordan Poole, a first-round draft pick in 2019, and Juan Toscano-Anderson, who came out of the G League, the Warriors went 39-33.Now Golden State is nearly whole. And the team has welcomed the reappearance of a familiar figure: Andre Iguodala, a key cog in the team’s five straight trips to the finals, from 2015 to 2019, which produced three championships.“We built something special here,” said Iguodala, who has rejoined Golden State after spending most of the past two seasons with the Miami Heat.While Iguodala was gone, Golden State experienced its share of turbulence. But the franchise maintained a sense of stability. Curry and Green were still around. Thompson would be back at some point. And Steve Kerr, now entering his eighth season as the team’s coach, was at the helm. The pieces were there. It would just take some time for them all to coalesce again.“Our expectations are definitely higher this year than they have been the last couple of years,” said Kerr, whose team went 5-0 in the preseason. “It’s a really fun group to coach.”The Lakers will be playing under an even brighter spotlight after overhauling their roster (again) this summer. They signed Anthony, traded for Russell Westbrook and acquired veterans like Kent Bazemore, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard and Rajon Rondo while jettisoning the bulk of their personnel from last season. Gone are many of the role players from their championship run in 2020: Kyle Kuzma, Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.The Lakers are not big on continuity, demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice draft picks and young players for name-brand stars of a certain vintage. If there is urgency, it stems in large part from the fact that James is 36 and has struggled with injuries in recent years. No athlete can operate at the height of his powers forever, not even James. And so the Lakers have gone about mortgaging their future in pursuit of another championship now — if they can create chemistry in short order while avoiding more health problems.“I think our basketball I.Q., our talent and our skill will, for the most part, get us there,” Anthony said, “and then, the cohesiveness of being together and playing together will take us over the top. We understand where we want to be and where we’re going to be, but we’re not there yet.”Draymond Green, right, provided a critical defensive complement to the offense of Stephen Curry, left, during Golden State’s championship runs.John Hefti/Associated PressThe team has acknowledged that it will be a work in progress. As James put it before the start of training camp, “I don’t think it’s going to be like peanut butter and jelly to start the season.”Any mention of preseason basketball ought to come with the disclaimer that the games are fairly meaningless. But the Lakers did go 0-6, which was enough to raise some important questions: Is this a hodgepodge roster? Can a team this old withstand the rigors of an 82-game regular season? And, perhaps most important, can Westbrook and James, two ball-dominant players, coexist in a productive way?Frank Vogel, the team’s coach, said he had no such concerns.“There’s definitely a willingness for those guys to share and sacrifice,” he said, adding, “It’s tough to get 15-plus-year vets to be completely serious about the preseason.”For his part, James said Monday that he had fully recovered from the ankle injury that slowed him toward the end of last season — “I didn’t do much basketball for the first two months of the summer,” he said — and that he was ready for a fresh start, one that will come against an opponent that, unlike the Lakers, hopes to reach into its past. More

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      Andre Iguodala Plans to End His Career With Golden State

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      Iguodala said he plans to return on a one-year deal after a detour to the Miami Heat. “The opportunity to end it here was just something special,” he said.Andre Iguodala found himself in recent months in discussions with his few N.B.A. peers remaining, the ones who sculpted paralleling journeys, from being teenagers to experiencing parenthood, from playing for free in high school gyms to playing for millions in front of thousands. More

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      An N.B.A. Veteran Turns Wisdom Into Wins, On and Off the Court

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn N.B.A. Veteran Turns Wisdom Into Wins, On and Off the CourtAt 36, Andre Iguodala is on the back end of his N.B.A. career, as an elder statesman with the Miami Heat, but he’s hitting his stride in the tech world.Andre Iguodala has used his N.B.A. savvy to help build his career on the court and in the tech world.Credit…Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesBy More