Harrison Barnes delivers Warriors potentially catastrophic late-season home loss

By / / Sports / 4 minutes of reading


SAN FRANCISCO — Two Aprils ago, in the closing seconds of a crucial Game 4 between the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings, Harrison Barnes had a clean shot at the buzzer to put Sacramento up 3-1 in the series and rip the heart out of the San Francisco crowd. He missed. The Kings lost the series in seven games.

Two Aprils later, on a lessened stage with a new team, Barnes was delivered another chance to dagger his former team at the buzzer. This time — on a far more difficult fading left-wing 3 over a Jimmy Butler contest — Barnes delivered, sending the Spurs to a 114-111 comeback win over the Warriors.

This game meant next to nothing to Barnes’ team. The Spurs are 33-47, secure in their lottery standing and already ticketed for vacation next week. But Barnes can take an extra bit of satisfaction about how potentially devastating this loss could prove to be for the Warriors.

Because of their 22-6 surge after the Butler trade, the Warriors entered Wednesday night controlling their destiny. If they won their final three games, they’d be guaranteed a top-six seed and a week of rest and prep time for a first-round series. They just needed to beat the Spurs, Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers.

The Warriors no longer control their regular-season destiny. If the Memphis Grizzlies win their final three games against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks — plus the Clippers beat the Kings on Friday and the Nuggets beat the Houston Rockets on Sunday — then the Warriors would be boxed out of the top six, regardless of whether they win their final two games.

That would drop them into the Play-In Tournament bracket, an elimination-style format that has been bad to the franchise in its short history.

“A good team takes care of business the next two and goes from there,” Steph Curry said. “We have to prove we’re a good team.”

The Warriors committed three bad turnovers in the final two minutes against the Spurs. They were crushed by 16 points in Curry’s 11 minutes off the bench. Without Quinten Post, out with an illness, they tried Gui Santos in their typical start of the second-quarter unit and were pummeled 19-3. To open the fourth, they tried Jonathan Kuminga instead of Santos in that group, and it didn’t work.

“Couldn’t get a stop,” Draymond Green said. “Couldn’t get into nothing good offensively. Couldn’t get a stop.”

Moses Moody went 3-of-11 shooting and missed six of his seven 3s. Brandin Podziemski, who has been so hot of late, also went 3-of-11. The Warriors only received offense from Curry (30 points), Butler (28 points, including 16 free throws) and a 12-point dose of Kuminga in his brief 18-minute stint.

“Mess around with games in this league and you lose,” Green said.

The Warriors still had a shot to escape disaster in the closing sequence. They had the ball with the score tied at 109 and 30.1 seconds left. But Curry flubbed an inbounds pass into a bad turnover, and then Green and Butler had a rare defensive miscommunication that gave Keldon Johnson an uncontested layup with 11 seconds left.

Barnes briefly bailed out the Warriors, fouling Green with three seconds left on what seemed to be a dying offensive possession. Green hit both free throws. Overtime seemed probable. Then Barnes stunned his former team with a dagger.

“We know where we’re at,” Curry said. “We know every game is important. It’s been important for the last two weeks. We’ve done a lot to give ourselves a chance to climb pretty high considering where we were before the trade deadline. Then these last two home games, it sucks for different reasons. Houston and then tonight, we feel like were winnable. Should have won. … We just made it a little harder on ourselves.”

(Photo of Harrison Barnes’ 3-pointer at the buzzer over Jimmy Butler: David Gonzales / Imagn Images)





Source link

Start typing and press enter to search

Scroll to Top