Kerr on Kuminga for Game 7: “early and get his feet wet”
[G6+off-day thoughts/videos/transcripts]
Reminder of the twists and turns of this series, as I’ve been writing in each of the past six-or-so articles after each game:
Game 1: Warriors locked in, maybe young Rockets have jitters (per Ime Udoka pregame of Game 7 which just happened)
Game 2: one Wardell Stephen Curry tried to steal it with hero shots (and bad turnovers) early, Jimmy Butler gets hurt and Houston bullies the rest of the team
Game 3: good execution by Golden State sans Jimmy
Game 4: Brandin Podziemski and Buddy Hield have career nights as Udoka deploys the “inverted zone” (what I call it, see podcast below) extra heavy — along with the double-big lineup
Game 5: Jimmy, perhaps not going 100%, makes four disastrous plays in the first quarter and the Warriors get blown out. The inverted zone kind of gets lost in the shuffle because of the blowout.
Game 6: Inverted zone with double-bigs stifle Warriors in 4th quarter.
And so here we are. Will the Warriors finally figure out the zone?
If they don’t, I’d be surprised if they win, because the basketball gods usually reward innovation and execution. Granted, Steph could go nuclear and that changes everything — which is why we also need to spend this moment to appreciate him.
Not a ton of Game 7s with Curry remaining in his career.
Again, I’ll unlock the transcripts behind the paywall when I post the next article, but you can read them in the Comments on YouTube anyways.
The stuff below includes Steve Kerr from pregame Game 7 as well as Saturday off-day Zoom call with reporters, so it’s chronological order starting with pregame before Game 6: