Subscribe
Follow Us
The Golden State Warriors weren't always basketball's evil empire. Before Kevin Durant joined forces in the summer of 2016 with a 73-9 team that had just dispatched of his Oklahoma City Thunder in a hard-fought seven-game series, the Warriors had the chance to be one of the most beloved dynasties in all of professional sports. LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers got in the way, though, setting the stage for Golden State to become the most hated team in the NBA – and their incumbent stars, just like Durant, to face incessant and widespread criticism.
After the Warriors beat the Houston Rockets in Game 6 at Toyota Center on Friday night, playing without Durant, Draymond Green passionately and profanely defended Steph Curry and Klay Thompson from frequent accusations that the Splash Brothers are “soft.”
“I can’t remember a situation where we’ve had must-win games and my guys folded,” he told Marcus Thompson of The Athletic. “I can’t remember. I’ve seen guys have bad games. But I’ve never seen us in any situation where there was a big-pressure moment and they fold. But yet they’re light-skinned and they’re soft. F*** outta here. They ain’t never folded in a big moment. But they don’t get credit for that because their jump shots are pretty. F*** them jump shots. They show up in big moments. They got heart.”
Indeed, Thompson and Curry, just like they have so many times before, came up biggest when it mattered most for the Warriors.
Thompson poured in 21 of his 27 points in the first half of Game 6, ensuring Golden State went into halftime tied with the Rockets despite the confounding struggles of Curry. After going scoreless before intermission, Curry scored 33 points in the second half, including a career-high 23 points in the fourth quarter, to put Houston away for good.
Have there been times when Curry and Thompson fail to impact the game at a high level because their jumpers aren't falling? Sure. Still, as Green so forcefully insisted, there's never any quit in the Splash Brothers, a reality the Rockets now understand better than anyone.
