Golden State Warriors

The NBA Finals return to Chase Center for a pivotal Game 5 matchup between the Warriors and Celtics.

Marcus Smart, Derrick White and Al Horford also have had their moments offensively for the Celtics in the Finals, who as a team are shooting 49 percent in their wins and 39 percent in their losses. He’s averaging 34.3 points while shooting over 49 percent (both overall and on 3-pointers), and he’s made no fewer than five threes in any game in these Finals. Should he keep up at this pace, this will be Curry’s highest scoring performance in his NBA Finals career, and the third highest scoring postseason series overall. He’s averaging 3.0 blocks per game and has the second best average plus-minus rating (+5.0) among players who play at least 15 minutes a game in this series, trailing only Looney. The Celtics have been the best road team during this postseason, and they’ll need that to ring true at least one more time to keep their Championship hopes alive. AST: Tatum (6.2) Wiggins has been dealt the tough task of defending Boston’s All-NBA star Jayson Tatum. And just as he did against Luka Doncic in the Western Conference Finals, Wiggins is making Tatum work for everything he gets in The Finals. Tatum is averaging 22.3 points while shooting 34.1 percent from the field, down from the 27.0 points on 44.6 percent shooting he had through the first three rounds of the postseason. In fact, the Warriors have outscored the Celtics by a single point (422-421) through the first four games. Curry made seven threes in the game and Andrew Wiggins had 17 points and a career-high 16 rebounds in the win, which tied the series up at 2-2. AST: Green (6.2) Stephen Curry had 43 points and the Warriors ended a tightly contested game with a 17-3 run to win Game 4, 107-97, in Boston on Friday night. The Warriors have won the third quarter in each of the first four games of the series and are a cumulative plus-49 in that period for the series, but Boston rode dominant fourth quarters to each of their wins in Games 1 and 3. AST: 27.2 (1st) The Dubs have gone 10-1 at home this postseason, and with three games at most left in the series, the Warriors can and will use any edge they can with each team two wins away from an NBA Championship. If Monday’s Game 5 plays out anything like the first four games, it will be decided in the second half, as the team who has won the second half has won each of the first four games in the series.

Nothing is easy against the Celtics, but a legendary Curry Flurry kept Golden State alive.

Curry said that, even though Golden State had a poor start offensively, the tone of the game was completely different from the previous one: "It wasn't a perfect first quarter, but we gave ourselves enough life." There were also Games 2 and 5 of the Finals, both in Toronto, both narrow, gutsy victories against an opponent that was ahead in the series and pulling out every defensive trick in the book. The Celtics' defense blends the best attributes of those Rockets (switchability) and those Raptors (intelligence). It has pushed Kerr to an uncomfortable place, where every lineup decision is a bet on Golden State either circumventing a spacing issue or scrounging up just enough stops to survive. That was its first experience on this stage, and it was down 2-1 against the Cleveland Cavaliers before it won three straight. Looney's layup turned a one-possession game into a two-possession game, and it deflated a crowd that was ready to explode. "The heart on that man is incredible," Thompson said.