Even down the stretch during Friday’s Game 4, it appeared as though the Boston Celtics had a very realistic chance of pulling out a hard-fought victory on their home floor that, in turn, would have sent them back to the Bay Area for a Monday night Game 5 up 3-1 and on the cusp of being crowned NBA Champions.
Leading into the fourth during the contest, momentum shifted a bit, as the Warriors ended up winning the extremely pivotal third period by a score of 30-24, but, even with this, the C’s only saw themselves down by just one point (79-78) whilst heading into the crunch-time quarter.
From the jump, we saw both ball clubs trading blows left and right, starting with a beautiful drive-and-kick from Jayson Tatum to Derrick White in the corner for a wide-open trey, followed by a Jordan Poole pull-up on the next possession, a tough side-step 3-pointer by Tatum, and so on.
Throughout the first few minutes, it seemed that, with the back and forth trend to start, fans could be finding themselves gearing up for a down-to-the-wire epic finish or perhaps even an overtime excursion.
Then the final five minutes of action came about.
This was where Golden State secured the much-needed win for themselves.
Led by the likes of Stephen Curry–had himself perhaps the greatest performance of his career, finishing with 43 points, 10 boards, and four assists–, the Dubs managed to outscore the Boston Celtics 17-3 during this final stretch, with the superstar guard being directly responsible for 13 of his team’s points.
The shamrocks shot a putrid 1-of-8 from the field and 1-of-7 from deep in this duration of time and went on to take one attempt from the floor (a miss by Derrick White) while coughing up a turnover and committing three fouls (one of which was in the form of an and-one shooting foul on Curry) in the final minute of action alone.
By the time the five-minute mark rolled around, Boston actually held a four-point edge after a wild sequence that saw a buzzer-beating Marcus Smart 3-pointer. Unfortunately, the Warriors caught fire (namely Curry) from then on out while the C’s grew cold and, in the end, Golden State came away with a 107-97 win.
Now, Ime Udoka‘s squad heads on the road for a must-win Game 5 with the series tied up at two games apiece rather than having the 3-1 record that, even late into Friday’s bout, was right in their sights.
They have the final five minutes of regulation to thank for this.