NBA Finals 2022

Losing 104-94 on Monday night in Game 5 of the 2022 NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics now trail the Golden State Warriors 3-2 in this series, casting a ton of ...

The game plan for the Celtics heading into Game 5 was to stop Curry by any means necessary and live with the result. Andrew Wiggins finished with 26 points, Klay Thompson had 21 points, Draymond Green had 8 points and coming off-the-bench, Jordan Poole and Gary Payton II combined for 29 points. Starting with Wiggins, he has been arguably the best two-way player in this series and has caused Jayson Tatum to become non-existent at times. Coming off a 43-point performance and one of the best shooting displays in NBA Finals history, Curry was held to just 16 points on 7-22 shooting, 0-9 from three-point range. This is definitely not ideal, but they still had a chance to win this game. In this series, Wiggins’ 47 total rebounds leads all players.

Despite Stephen Curry having a rare off-shooting night in Game 5, Andrew Wiggins stepped up to deliver 26 points and 13 rebounds to lead the Golden State ...

• The Warriors finished with a 17-7 edge in deflections – and ended with a 9-2 advantage in steals. • Jaylen Brown (33.3%), Marcus Smart (35.7%) and Jayson Tatum (37.5%) each held their defensive matchups below 40% shooting in Game 5. • Klay Thompson was the only Warriors starter to make a 3-pointer in Game 5 as he finished 5-of-11 from beyond the arc and scored 71.4% of his points on 3s. In their three losses, Boston posted an eFG% below 49%. In their two wins, their eFG% was 62.9% (Game 1) and 55.6% (Game 3). • Through the first four games of the Finals, Stephen Curry scored 39.8% of Golden State’s points while he was on the court. • Among the starters, Stephen Curry (29.9%) and Jaylen Brown (28.2%) led their respective teams in usage rate. Payton Pritchard led the Celtics at 31.1% but missed all three of his 3-point attempts in his five minutes on the floor. • Boston doubled up Golden State on the offensive glass (8-4) and finished with a 16-7 advantage in second-chance points. Stephen Curry, Gary Payton II and Jaylen Brown each scored 10 points in the paint in Game 5. The Celtics outscored the Warriors by 13.0 points per 100 possessions in Williams’ 30 minutes on the court. • Gary Payton II (15) and Jordan Poole (14) combined to score 29 points off the Warriors bench, while Kevon Looney added two points in 17 foul-plagued minutes. Boston’s Grant Williams (3 points, 1-2 FG, 0-1 3P), Derrick White (1 point, 0-4 FG, 0 3 3P) and Payton Pritchard (0 points, 0-3 FG, 0-3 3P) combined to shoot just 1-of-9 from the field and 0-7 from 3-point range in 42 combined minutes.

At various points over the past eight years, the Golden State Warriors have played—and text tk Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of.

Looney has gone from oft-injured and playing in shorter spurts to the third-best Warriors player in a damn Finals series. News flash, though: No matter how good the Warriors have been and continue to be, they are not unfair. And just to get out in front of this: The Warriors also aren't here, on the precipice of another title, thanks to some generally inaccessible, stroke-of-genius gap year. Curry is still a top-five player at the age of 34. But it is far more logical than the aspect of fandom in which we're conditioned to care about how on earth billionaires can afford certain roster moves. Oh, and how do they pay for all this?

They make money, hand over fist because they built their own arena — with private (loaned) funds — off the back of their success in Oakland.

Profits on the court. They were in a position to sign KD because the league infused all of its new TV money into the salary cap at once rather than bake it in over time. Location limitations are a separate dilemma, a problem that warps the opportunity to acquire stars outside the draft. Big. Freaking. Whoop. Golden State still needed to finagle itself within the confines of the hard cap to make that happen, which materially impacted its roster and asset chest. In practice, though, the Warriors didn't cheat the system, get granted an exception for a top-five superstar without cap space or even employ the art of witchcraft. They are set to pay around $346.2 million for their roster after baking in the repeater tax. Twitter is #PrettyPissed about this slant—not just Warriors fans, but the NBA intelligentsia in general.

Andrew Wiggins' Game 5 breakout shows how the Warriors help players become the best version of themselves, Melissa Rohlin writes.

"Being in the league, and this is the ultimate stage. And the stage is right. It was the exclamation point on the best game of his career, and Thompson beamed while describing it. The situation is right. The timing is right. The support system, everyone on this team, this organization, they support you, and they want to see you do good. The past two games, he has had a combined 41 points and 29 rebounds. Wiggins went from being considered a failed No. 1 pick in the 2014 draft by Cleveland to becoming an All-Star for the first time on this team. You kind of need to find the right place, the right teammates, that kind of stuff. Wiggins has been the X-factor for the Warriors in the NBA Finals, with his magnum opus coming Monday in Game 5. And in a pivotal Game 5 of the NBA Finals, Wiggins took over. He's likely not going to win Finals MVP, but that performance was enough to skyrocket Wiggins into contention for the honor.

The Celtics did plenty to hurt their own cause in Game 5, but what our John Tomase couldn't stand the most was how they dealt with the officials.

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