The runs in the Miami-Boston series disgusted me. They were unworthy of legitimate championship teams, I wrote. Then this.
Golden State is a legitimate championship team, they've won them. And yet they carried a ten-point lead into the fourth quarter last night and lost by twelve, outscored FORTY to SIXTEEN. For records fetishists: 1) It was the first time a team had led a Finals game by double digits entering the fourth quarter and lost by double digits; 2) It was the most lopsided fourth quarter in Finals history. It is nauseating. If it had been any team other than Golden State I would have cried FRAUD!
But the "Warriors" are not frauds. I don't know what the hell it is but to state the obvious: Boston didn't game-plan to lull Golden State into complacency by spotting them a dime heading home, and Golden State didn't experience collective, sudden paralysis in the five minutes between the third and fourth. Hanif Abdurraqib wrote after Miami-Boston G5 that the games were without momentum, that it was as if both teams had their memories wiped of each other after each game. Since it is now happening in the Finals, amnesia seems to be a Boston thing. Steph Curry said after this one that the "Warriors" would "learn from that fourth quarter." Learn what? There are no lessons, Steph.
Those are all what it was not. What it was was more unnerving than anything that ever happened in Finals history. The records say so.
