SAN FRANCISCO — The Celtics came to town with one of the league’s best offenses. Without Andrew Wiggins available to guard Jayson Tatum and the Warriors dragging a disappointing defense so far this season, it was fair to question Golden State’s chances heading into Saturday’s game.
The Warriors had no doubt they could topple their Finals foe again, holding Boston to 107 points — well below their league-leading 120.8 point per game average and 121.7 points per 100 possessions in a statement Warriors’ win.
The same Boston team shooting 40 percent from 3 this season shot 30 percent at Chase Center. Tatum, averaging 30 points per game on 47 percent shooting this season, scored 18 points on 6-of-21 shooting. Boston arrived feeling unstoppable only to realize their NBA Finals foe still had their number.
Klay Thompson and Jonathan Kuminga took on and conquered Boston’s All-Star wings.
Thompson’s 34 points led the team and lit up the arena, but a throwback defensive performance stood out. He flipped back to a pre-injured version of himself defensively, playing staunch one-on-one defense against a powerful wing in Tatum.
“I know he was motivated coming off the way the game went in Utah,” Steph Curry said.
It’s taken time for Thompson to find his footing and lateral movement defensively after tearing his ACL in 2019 and Achilles in 2020, but his size and strength came into play against Tatum. He set the tone early in the first quarter by blocking Tatum’s layup attempt off the backboard.
“It felt really good to pin somebody off the backboard,” Thompson said. “I haven’t done that in, I think, four years. That was probably my favorite moment for myself tonight. It wasn’t just me, I had a lot of help and Jayson missed a lot of shots that he usually makes. Collective effort, but I thought my energy was great to start the game.”
The collective effort started with Thompson and extended through Kuminga, who saw time guarding Tatum but also Warrior-killer Jaylen Brown. The 20-year-old limited his mistakes, made good switches and not only kept the Celtics players in front of him, but found ways to funnel them to help defenders.
This isn’t new; Kuminga has been a force, improving defensively by the game. Draymond Green has taken notice. Upon returning home from a strong defensive performance in the Warriors’ bizarre los to Utah on Wednesday in which he had a late-game stop against Jordan Clarkson, Green took Kuminga aside to go over film and show the second-year player small tweaks to turn his good defense into great defense.
“He’s been telling me that I’m playing good defense,” Kuminga said. “I just have to learn certain tricks on defense. Sometimes I don’t have to do a lot of jobs on defense if I just know how to play against the people playing against me. It’s a mental thing, a mind thing. You just know how to think and it will be even easier. I will end up getting steals and being able to stop my man from scoring.”
Kuminga could be an answer to shore up the Warriors’ faulty point-of-attack defense — a dynamic that hasn’t yet recovered since Gary Payton II left for more money in Portland in free agency.
“I thought JK was great,” coach Steve Kerr said. “I mean, just his athleticism and size and strength to be able to bring him off the bench and put him on either Brown or Tatum and then the way he can switch and stay in front of people, whether it’s those two I just mentioned or Marcus Smart, Malcolm Brogdon or Derrick White, the guys who are attacking, JK has really helped solidify our defense and give us another weapon.”
Down the line the Warriors were productive defensively. Donte DiVincenzo played strong defense on the perimeter and his eight rebounds show he clearly has a nose for the boards. He finished with a plus-20, his 17 minutes setting an aggressive tone off the bench. Kevon Looney picked up where he left off in last year’s NBA Finals, snatching up a team-leading 15 rebounds on the night.
“We were familiar with the team,” Jordan Poole said. “But guys were just locked in today. The entire 48 from jump ball. I think that shows how talented we are when we lock in and we focus and play together.”
