The Associated Press
OAKLAND, Calif.–JaVale McGee has made a name for himself catching lob passes and reliably slamming them home to the pure delight of his teammates.
And oh did those matter for the short-handed Golden State Warriors as they moved one win closer to another NBA championship.
The typically spot-on “Splash Brothers” weren’t hitting consistently. Kevin Durant wasn’t on the court at all, nor Shaun Livingston.
McGee shined on a night none of the usual stars found their steady shooting strokes and sparked Golden State off the bench with 15 points as the Warriors beat the Portland Trail Blazers 110-81 in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series last night.
“That’s my whole thing. I just try to be efficient out there,” McGee said.
The back-up big man made all seven of his field-goal attempts, and delivered several more of his signature alley-oop dunks, as Durant watched with a strained left calf he hurt in the series-opener Sunday.
“Sometimes we get caught up in looking for him too much when he’s not open because we feel he can do something spectacular above the rim,” Stephen Curry noted.
Draymond Green put together another fantastic all-around game, getting 12 rebounds, 10 assists, six points, and three more blocked shots after swatting five in Sunday’s win.
Curry went 6-for-18 for 19 points, and also had six assists and six rebounds.
Klay Thompson was 6-of-17 with 16 points for Portland while CJ McCollum and Damian Lillard hardly were the dynamic scoring duo they had been in combining for 75 points only three days earlier.
Again, Golden State did it on defence–holding the Blazers to 12 points in the third quarter.
“Our offence got scattered, we were rushing everything,” said coach Steve Kerr.
“We were just not poised offensively and that put our defence in a bad position,” he noted.
“I thought in the third quarter we settled our offence down, which helped our defence.”
And now the Warriors own a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series as it shifts to Portland for Game 3 on Saturday, just as Kerr’s group did going ahead on the Blazers in last year’s Western Conference semi-final won in five games.
Elsewhere in the NBA playoffs, Washington beat Atlanta 109-101 and Houston downed Oklahoma City 115-111 to lead their respective first-round series 2-0.
