Now, the Golden State Warriors want Draymond Green to pack his three-point shot for the altitude of Salt Lake City.
Green on Thursday showed Quin Snyder his hot hand and range up close, knocking down five three-pointers and scoring 21 points before a brief knee scare late in the Golden State Warriors’ 115-104 victory over the Utah Jazz for a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference semi-finals.
“We love that shot. It gives us a huge lift,” Stephen Curry said of Green’s perimeter touch. “Hopefully that jumper travels when we go to Utah because those shots will be open.”
Photo: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY
Kevin Durant added 25 points with 13 free throws, 11 rebounds and seven assists, while Curry had 23 points, seven assists and played smothering defense as Golden State stayed unblemished through six playoff games.
Gordon Hayward overcame a poor Game 1 and slow start to score 33 points, while Rudy Gobert had 16 points and 16 rebounds before fouling out for a Jazz team missing injured point guard George Hill. He was ruled out earlier in the day because of a sore left big toe.
Game 3 is today in Salt Lake City.
Green received chants of “Dray-mond” when he headed for the locker room with 7 minutes, 24 seconds to play, then cheers when he returned at the 5:16 mark.
He came up awkwardly after hitting the floor on a drive, then grabbed at his left knee — which the team said he “tweaked.”
“I knew my knee was just locking up a little bit. I had it before,” he said.
Snyder made it clear when the series began he will not be alienating Green again by daring him to let it fly from long range — or saying anything that could be perceived as a slight.
Five months after the Jazz coach commented about allowing the emotional Golden State star to shoot from way out, Snyder said before the game he had learned his lesson about fueling the All-Star forward.
Green has been fueling himself just fine and his teammates, too — delivering on the offensive side of his game after establishing the Warriors’ defensive intensity during the first five playoff games.
All his three-pointers were in the first half as the Warriors led wire to wire. Golden State’s six straight victories to begin a post-season are a franchise record.
Green also had seven rebounds, six assists, four steals and another block to bring his six-game playoff total to 20.
The Jazz have to hope more of their shots start falling at home.
Hayward began one for five, but bounced back to shoot 11 of 21 after going four for 15 in Game 1.
“We play with attitude when we get down. We have to do it from the beginning,” Gobert said. “I think we need to play angry from the first minute.”
In Washington, John Wall scored 24 points and Isaiah Thomas was held to 13 as the Washington Wizards scored a 116-89 victory over the Boston Celtics in a technical foul-filled Game 3 to cut their series deficit to 2-1.
The Wizards used a 22-0 first-quarter run to take a 34-12 lead as Thomas and the Celtics kept missing shots and turning the ball over.
The game was already a blowout in the second when Washington’s Kelly Oubre Jr was ejected for charging and knocking over Kelly Olynyk after the Boston big man was called for an illegal screen.
There were eight technical fouls and three ejections in total.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier