Steph Curry was phenomenal during Game 2 of the NBA Finals. The superstar point guard helped lead his team to victory while moving up the Finals MVP race. He dropped a game-high 29 points throughout the night to tie the series up at one apiece. It wasn’t just his offense that was impressive during Game 2 either. Draymond Green was one of the first to point out that his defense was a major reason for their success. He said, “I’ve been talking about it the last couple years how much he’s improved on that side of the ball. Teams used to try to call him into every action and just try to pick on him. That doesn’t work anymore.”
He picked up three steals on the night and the Golden State Warriors themselves forced a ridiculous 19 turnovers on the Boston Celtics. Golden State scored 33 points from those turnovers as well to make matters worse for Boston.
With Curry’s recent performance, the Finals MVP ladder has him sitting in the number one spot. Believe it or not, this game was his ninth straight NBA Finals matchup where he scored 20 plus points. With that scoring performance, Golden State found a way to outscore the Celtics 35-21 in the third quarter. It was actually their best point differential in a single quarter of the Finals in their organization’s history. Steph dropped 14 points in the third quarter. That was the same number of points of nine different Celtics players during that same quarter of action.
Going over to a quote that Steve Kerr said now, “Steph was breathtaking in that quarter. Not just the shot-making, but the defensive effort. He just doesn’t get enough credit for his level of conditioning, physicality and defense. People go at him to try to wear him down because they know how important he is to us offensively. It’s pretty dramatic the different in Steph’s strength and physicality in his body now from eight years ago when I first got here. So, the guy’s amazing.”
I think it’s fair to say that Curry is getting a lot of praise and rightfully so. The point guard is one of the major reasons they are even in the Finals to begin with here. Now, let’s quickly cover some other players on the Finals MVP ladder.
Right behind Curry is Jordan Poole. Now, even to me this is a little surprising. He had a team-worst plus/minus of –19. He only shot two for seven from the field as well with four turnovers. All of that was from Game 1. In Game 2, he scored 17 points with 14 of them coming in the second half. He was also the youngest player in league history to score five threes in an NBA Finals game. When Poole scores over 10 points, the Warriors are 12-3 in the postseason. He’s a big impact when he gets going.
Then finally at number three is Kevon Looney. Looney has been so good lately. He dropped 12 points and seven rebounds in Game 2 while also picking up three steals on the night. Looney is always putting up strong screens and grabbing offensive rebounds with his relentless effort on the glass. The stat sheet may not show him impact all the time, but seriously, he is wildly important to the Warriors success.
