Stephen Curry's Golden State Warriors widened the contours of their legend this Thursday in Boston, putting the finishing touch to their particular story of overcoming and winning their fourth ring in eight years.
As if that weren't enough, they won (103-90) in the sixth game of the tie (4-2) and at home, before one of the most traditional fans in the NBA.
Those from San Francisco passed over some Celtics who, shaken by reality, woke up at home, with their clothes on and with the hangover of the missed opportunity to return, so long later, to the exclusive club of those chosen for glory.
Four years have passed since the Warriors lifted their last trophy.
Four years that felt like an unfairly long parenthesis at the end of the game for the triumvirate of its stars: Curry, who won for the first time in his career – and as expected – the MVP trophy for the best player in the final, Klay Thompson and Dramond Green.
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NBA Finals 2022 between Warriors and Celtics: match schedule and results
They met when they were boys and have been playing together for a decade, in which they have achieved four championships;
three of them before the parenthesis forced by the departure of Kevin Durant and by a terrifying injury to Thompson, which kept him out of the game for 31 months, until his return last January.
He is not yet in the fullness of his faculties, but those that assist him today were enough for his team to win a championship that, it is not too much to let the imagination run wild, will have tasted especially glorious to him.
This season's title is the franchise's seventh, thus breaking ties with the Chicago Bulls and placing third in the record (behind the Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers, tied at 17).
The victory underpins the greatness of Curry, a 34-year-old player who has marked an era and has given a change of direction to a game that in a certain way has adapted to his virtues as an infallible and mischievous shooter.
This Thursday, which did not start as one of his brightest Thursdays, his legend got a little bigger.
The Warriors guard was able to overcome a disappointing start and finished as always: top scorer, tied on 34 points with Jaylen Brown of the Celtics, and with seven rebounds, seven assists and six triples in his locker.
As the clock ticked down to the last few seconds of the match, he couldn't help hugging his father on the sideline.
And then he told the press: "Achieving this championship is especially exciting, so it has cost us to come back here."
His trainer, Steve Kerr, later confirmed that without him none of this would have been possible.
The trio that Curry has formed over the years with Thompson and Green pays homage to the height of few NBA dynasties with this victory.
For the futurologists, it remains to analyze whether or not this will be his last hurray.
For the Celtics, it simply could not be.
In a game that they dominated for only a breath at the start, the Warriors prevailed over a tired local team, lacking in concentration and ideas and brimming with anxiety, who did not know how to rise to the occasion of playing their first final in 12 years.
Nor was it any encouragement that it has been 14 long years since they won their last championship.
The fans who filled the TD Garden stadium, decked out to the gills in green, like the rest of a city devoted to the final, began by celebrating each basket, each personal foul and each rebound as if they were the final ones, and ended up installed in impotence , shaking his head and in some moments at the end of the first half even booing his own.
Curry, best player
The thing was about to get bigger when its great star, Jayson Tatum, who has not finished finding himself in these
playoffs
, lost an attack ball three and a half minutes from the end of the match.
The scoreboard indicated a difference of 12 points and the referee whistled for steps.
After that, it seemed that his people had definitely lowered their arms, and some fans began to line up for the exit.
Shouts of “MVP, MVP!” also began.
when Curry enjoyed possession.
The TD Garden has had him in recent weeks as his favorite black beast (with the permission of Draymond Green), but in this stadium, the nobility (of basketball) also oblige.
Although it is true that it was not necessary to be a fortune teller to bet that he would win a trophy that, alas, bears the name of one of the eternal glories of Boston, Bill Russell, who won it 11 times.
Stephen Curry is the 2021-22 recipient of the Bill Russell Trophy awarded to the #NBAFinals MVP!
pic.twitter.com/dNE9V7glu9
— NBA (@NBA) June 17, 2022
The city, one of those with the greatest basketball tradition in the United States, had believed that this team, made up of young players like Tatum, and, like him, capable of the worst and the best in the blink of an eye, would be able to return the good old days.
At least, they have the consolation of the road that still lies ahead.
And that the Celtics came out very focused, and in a matter of two minutes they were already, in a dream start, 10 up (12-2).
But then, players and fans woke up from sleep, and they chained an intolerable series of failed attacks.
Before they knew it, they were down five points at the end of the first quarter (22-27).
Although Curry, unusually off center, nothing came out: they had to spend seven and a half minutes for him to score (a basket that, moreover, turned out to be two).
In the antepenultimate play of those first 12 minutes he scored, yes, one of those triples of his that ignore the laws of physics.
The second quarter started as if it were reflected in a concave mirror with the first.
Not even two minutes had passed and the San Francisco team was already ahead by 15 points, thanks to a 21-0 run in their favor and a Draymond Green who finally seemed to find his place in the tie, five and a half games later.
Lacking any reason to celebrate the Celtics, the stadium jumped to its feet when it was visited by Gabby Giffords, who was a congresswoman from Arizona from 2007 to 2012. In 2011, she survived a mass shooting, and has since been one of the prominent activists against armed violence in the United States, an epidemic that once again has the country on edge.
one last mirage
A timeout then seemed to bring the hosts back to life, who scored seven points for none of the Warriors.
But it was just a mirage.
The visitors came to put in the second quarter 21 points ahead.
The thing ended with a difference of 15 in his favor.
And the certainty that, without getting too disheveled, they had done everything better in the first half.
They grabbed 26 rebounds against the 17 of the Celtics, who hit three triples (of 14) compared to 10 (of 23) of the opponents.
In other words, with 13 turnovers, they went into halftime with the Celtics' biggest deficits in NBA Finals history.
The third quarter brought to the locals the name of Al Horford, who in the first final of his career was on the last night, and together with Jaylen Brown, the best of his: he hit three triples in a row and kept the dying flame of the Celtics.
They even rose from the grave, and for a moment a comeback seemed possible, when the hosts managed to reduce the difference to 10 points at the end of the third quarter.
It was just one of those post-mortem reflections that add spice to any wake, but remain just that, a scare.
The last quarter showed once again that the local team arrived more tired than the opponent at this stage, after agonizing qualifying rounds that demonstrated their resilience and invited their fans not to lose hope when they chained two defeats in a row, in the fourth and Game 5 of the Finals, first in Boston, where they really had it in hand, and then in San Francisco.
The night ended with an image that summed it all up for the Celtics: with the stadium empty, a worker undertook it with a very large hammer against an ice sculpture that celebrated the possibility that they would win their eighteenth ring this year.
Disappointment isn't the kind of feeling you sit back and watch slowly melt away.
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