The Warriors’ blueprint was to make things tough on Kawhi Leonard. It worked. But Golden State wasn’t prepared for Pascal Siakam and Toronto’s band of non-stars.
TORONTO — When you are champions, you stick with what got you here. For the Golden State Warriors, the formula in these 2019 playoffs had been fairly transparent: identify the best player on the opposing team — see James Harden and Damian Lillard — and harangue him into a night of frustration and disappointment.
Thus, the blueprint against the Toronto Raptors was to reduce Kawhi Leonard’s basketball life to misery, or at the very least considerable discomfort. Blitz him, double him, triple him if necessary, force him to give up the ball and dare the others to beat you.
It was a sound strategy on paper — except the «others» were not only expecting it, they were aiming to exploit it. So, it was a collection of «complementary» Raptors who vaulted Toronto to win Game 1 of the NBA Finals 118-109 in a raucous Scotiabank Arena, delivering a roundhouse right to a team that so often has seemed invincible.
Find everything you need to know about the NBA Finals here.
• Schedules, matchups and more
• ‘Strength in numbers’ in Raptors’ Game 1 win
• The six shots that could swing the Finals
• Predictions: Favorites and likely MVPs
• 5-on-5: Biggest Finals questions
• What’s next for eliminated teams?
On a night when Leonard, who had been the most transcendent player in the playoffs, was a mere mortal, players such as Pascal Siakam happily filled the void. Siakam, the 24-year old forward who once was on a path to the priesthood — until a visit, on a lark, to a summer basketball camp in his native Cameroon detoured him on an improbable basketball journey — scored 32 points on 14-of-17 shooting. It was a prolific performance that would have been unthinkable two short years ago, when he was a raw, unpolished player who couldn’t shoot.
At all.
«I was joking with him the other day,» teammate Fred VanVleet told ESPN. «We used to shoot together in my rookie year, and me and the guy rebounding used to duck sometimes because his shots would come off the rim so hard.
«He had some bad misses. But what you are seeing now is the result of a lot of hard work. You can just see his confidence soaring.»
The same can be said of VanVleet, who struggled mightily in earlier rounds of the playoffs but, following the birth of his young son, has rediscovered his shooting stroke.
