Andy Liu advocates for more use of the small ball that got the Warriors this far to begin with (Keith Allison/Creative Commons).

Andy Liu advocates for more use of the small ball that got the Warriors this far to begin with (Keith Allison/Creative Commons).

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

The mighty, 73-win, defending champion Golden State Warriors squandered a 13-point halftime lead, as the Oklahoma City Thunder stole Game 1 at Oracle Arena Monday night. While Golden State of Mind‘s Andy Liu admits the Thunder are playing their strongest basketball at the most ideal time, he believes the Warriors and Stephen Curry will have enough to get through to the Finals. He does, however, express concern over the MVP’s health, Golden State’s shot selection and which coach is currently doing the better job. Entertaining, informative segments have been transcribed below:

1:46-3:22: “They (the Warriors) should probably panic – like a controlled panic obviously. We don’t want (head coach) Steve Kerr to suddenly start making wholesale schematic changes. It’s not like they lost by 30… If Steph was 100 percent healthy, I think that he would’ve bailed them out last night, which would’ve been fine, but moving forward I don’t think he’s gonna get to 100 percent for the rest of the playoffs. So it’s a matter of ‘Can he play at 80, 85 percent and still carry this offense when it counts throughout the rest of the series?’”

4:30-4:49: “It’s just a matter of ‘How are they going to do it (start strong) again in Game 2, and then when OKC comes back and hits them, are they gonna lose composure again?’ You would believe that a championship team like this wouldn’t lose composure like that again, but, hey, OKC’s already done this to the Spurs three straight games; that was super-impressive.” Continue reading