DALLAS—The Golden State Warriors are one win away from yet another appearance in the NBA Finals.
If the Warriors secure one more victory against the Dallas Mavericks, it will be their fifth trip in seven years to basketball’s most prized event. One player that has witnessed all the team’s past success is none other than Stephen Curry.
Curry’s consistency
In Game 3 of the 2022 NBA Western Conference finals, Curry put up a stat line of 31 points, five rebounds, and 11 assists to help the Warriors win on the road, 109-100. Golden State is now up 3-0 on Dallas.
Those are numbers most basketball fans, especially in the Bay Area, have been accustomed to for years. But what some may underestimate is the value behind those numbers.
Curry now has a total of 47 career playoff games in which he has scored at least 30 points. He is averaging 28 points per contest in this current series against the Mavericks. Excluding the season when he played only five games due to a broken wrist (2019-20), Curry has led the team in regular season scoring the last three years.
And there is still more to come.
But all of that individual success does not stop him from acknowledging the grit and grind of his other teammates, including Andrew Wiggins.
Wiggins’s impact
After spending the first six years of his career with the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Warriors traded for Wiggins in February 2020.
He has been nothing short of spectacular in the 2022 postseason, especially in this series against Dallas. Wiggins scored 27 points in Game 3, a playoff career high, and talked about how important it is for him to be able to adapt his game to a variety of circumstances.
“With every game, with every series, there is a different challenge, a different opponent, a different type of basketball,” Wiggins said after Game 3 on Sunday.
What has been incredibly impressive for Wiggins has been how he has seamlessly blended his offensive talents with the already elite weapons the Warriors possess. That includes Curry, Klay Thompson, and breakout star Jordan Poole. Adding the basketball acumen of Draymond Green only adds to the multitude of offensive creativity Golden State Head Coach Steve Kerr has at his disposal.
Playoff basketball demands the highest standards from the NBA’s greatest talents. Wiggins believes that this is where he is destined to shine.
“I love it. I feel like it brings out the most in everybody,” Wiggins said Sunday. “It’s the biggest stage you can ask for.”
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Since arriving to Golden State in 2020, Andrew Wiggins has revamped the Warriors offense into as dominant as it has ever been. ; “Andrew Wiggins 2022” by Erik Drost is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Where does Dallas go from here?
No team has ever overcome a 0-3 deficit in the NBA playoffs. Although the Mavericks’ chances of winning this series are slim to none, do not expect them to play disheartened in Game 4, especially with the game at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
Head Coach Jason Kidd discussed how all he and his players can do is focus on Game 4. But he also believes that the future awaiting the team is something to behold.
With the elite young talents of Luka Dončić, Jalen Brunson, and Dorian Finney-Smith to go along with the tremendous play of Reggie Bullock, Tim Hardaway Jr., Spencer Dinwiddie, and Maxi Kleber, there is certainly reason to believe.
“This is just the beginning of this journey,” Kidd said after Sunday’s loss. “This is a lot bigger than just this one game or this series. This is huge for our franchise… It’s cool to go through this.”
The Mavericks completely exceeded expectations this season. What adds to how impressive a season they had was how they performed when the calendar flipped to 2022. Entering New Year’s Day, Dallas sat with an overall record of 17-18. They finished the regular season with a 52-30 record (a 35-game improvement).
That was good for fourth place in the Western Conference standings.
If the Warriors should expect anything going into Tuesday’s game, it should be a rough-and-tumble contest for 48 minutes.
Upcoming schedule
Game 4 between the Mavericks and Warriors is set to tip-off Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST. If Dallas wins, the series will return to San Francisco for Game 5 on Thursday.
