Warriors Do the Impossible, Get Momentum Back for Game 7

The Golden State Warriors finally looked familiar in a glorious, game-shifting, season-salvaging stretch—one that secured a seemingly impossible 108-101 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals.

Better late than never.

Share Tweet

OKC’s late-stage collapse, compounded by a vintage (but heretofore absent) Warriors closing surge, means the Thunder must return to Oakland for Game 7 without their most valuable commodity: momentum.

The Thunder spent the first three quarters of Saturday’s epic clash doing what they’d done for most of the series. They doused Golden State’s sparks, keeping the league’s best offense from igniting and answering seemingly every Warriors run with counter-streaks of their own.

As has been the case throughout the matchup, Oklahoma City’s defensive length bothered the Warriors. The following second-quarter possession was an example of that, as Andre Roberson refused to let Klay Thompson get the ball, and rangy help everywhere else forced a shot-clock violation:

Share Tweet Embed

Role-fillers like Roberson continued making impacts and prompting conversations nobody ever could have foreseen, per Bleacher Report’s Jared Dubin:

Roberson has been, what, the fifth best player in this series? I feel like that can’t be right but also that it is right somehow.

— Yaya Dubin (@JADubin5) May 29, 2016

And for at least the first 40 minutes of the game, the Thunder owned the edge in raw physicality.

So many of the same narratives developed—OKC’s size and athleticism gumming up Golden State’s offense, the Warriors turning the ball over too frequently, Curry failing to get loose against switches—that it was easy to see the balance of the contest playing out in familiar fashion.

The Thunder were poised to win.

Share Tweet

But for the first time, Golden …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com