Credit where credit is due to the Clippers in this one: it seemed like everything was going wrong for them literally the entire game, but they managed to keep things reasonable for most of it. Like, I’d look at the score thinking they were going to be down 25 but they were only down 10. This happened multiple times to me. I blame the commentators for being biased to the Warriors, and also for the home crowd because they weren’t cheering NEARLY loud enough for Clippers buckets, which greatly affected my perception of how the game was going.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, despite this highlight video, the very existence of which seems to imply some sort of “good performance”, didn’t have a great game. Especially early on, he and the Clippers seemed to be unable to get any sort of coherent offense going, with everyone running around aimlessly until Montrezl Harrell came in, demanded the ball, and started scoring. Gilge did end up with 18 points, which is actually not a bad point total for him, but watching the game, it didn’t feel like he was in control of things. And only 1 assist? And the assist was for a Harrell free-throw line floater? Need to do better next game.
Good news is, he was stout defensively, blocking Kevin Durant once and Stephen Curry twice. That’s why all these teams want big point guards: so that they can use their bigness to disrupt other big players as well as annihilate small point guards.