Warriors take first two games of Western Conference Finals in pursuit of Third Straight NBA Championship-Where do they go from here?

What else did you think was going to happen? Blazers upsetting the Warriors on their home court? That’s a good joke along with New York’s draft lottery chances every year. Anyways, the Golden State Warriors handily defeated the Portland Trailblazers 116-94 in the first game of the Western Conference Finals and narrowly beating them 114-111 in the second game.

Game 1 Summary and Analysis

Outscoring them in every quarter except the third, GSW was in full effect playing through their go to scoring option–the Splash Brothers. Klay Thompson was on fire from mid range scoring 26 points and Stephen Curry lighting it up from deep scoring 36 points mainly off of a tremendous 9 three pointers. We know how this team runs, they are consistent and their offense relies heavily on ball movement and three-point shooting; this is what they have been doing and will be doing throughout the rest of the postseason. I can assure you that they will take care of the Blazers in 5 or 6 games, possibly even 7 considering when Damian Lillard wants to switch it to “Dame Time”. Elaborating more on Lillard and his squad’s position after Game 1, they came very close to matching Golden State’s offensive prowess  playing through their bigs with Maurice Harkless, Rodney Hood, and Enes Kanter combining for 44 points and the fantastic backcourt duo of CJ McCollum and Damian Lillard going for 17 and 19 respectively . While the Blazers brought it on the offensive end, they just were not able to  stop them on the defensive end. After this first game the pressure was on the Blazers to try to steal Game 2 and even up the series, a challenge that they accepted.

Game 2 Summary and Analysis

The Trailblazers should have won this game, plain and simple. Up 65-50 at the end of the half, outscoring them, out defending them, it was clear that they were the better ball club going into the locker room at halftime. The Warriors turned the tide in the third and fourth quarter both with scoring in the paint and defending the rim, limiting the Blazers to only 32 points in the paint; they prevented them from working the ball inside and scoring pure points in the paint as they usually do. What is ALWAYS overlooked is the talent from the big men on this Golden State Squad, whether it’s Kevon Looney
facilitating the pick and roll offense and playing up at the rim, contributing to 14 of the 54 points in the paint scored by the team in Game 2. He keeps the ball moving and frequently connects on alley-oops, back-door cuts, and touch passes. Case in point, with 53 seconds left in the ball game he finished an alley-oop pass thrown by Draymond Green to take back the lead 112-111 which led to the final crumbling of the Blazers sending the teams to Portland, Oregon for games 3 and 4.  Overall, this game was hard fought and won through the main players like Stephen Curry and Looney complementing each other’s games by scoring, offensive rebounding, and passing as well as the championship caliber effort displayed by Green, Andre Iguodala, and Jordan Bell; the Warriors are poised to win at least 1 of 2 of the next games and the series eventually but what seems to be most probable is a clean sweep.