West explains why ’17 Warriors couldn’t finish playoffs 16-0 originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
The Warriors were one game away from going “four, four, four, four” in the 2017 NBA Playoffs, nearly bringing to life Moses Malone’s iconic quote from the 1983 postseason.
After becoming the first NBA team to start a postseason 15-0, the Warriors entered Game 4 of the 2017 NBA Finals with a chance to complete a perfect postseason, the first in modern league history.
But the Warriors came up short, losing 137-116 to the Cleveland Cavaliers before returning to Oakland and winning the series in five games at Oracle Arena.
Former Warrior David West joined The Ringer’s Logan Murdock and Raja Bell on the “Real Ones” podcast, and explained why he believes the team couldn’t close out the undefeated playoff run.
“I honestly don’t even know, I think it was a combination of the NBA wanting another game, the referees kinda saying ‘you motherf—-s ain’t gonna just sweep this s–t,'” West told Murdock and Bell. “And it was one of those games, I remember saying to somebody, ‘yo I feel like they want Steph (Curry) or (Kevin Durant) KD to score like 50 in this game for us to win’ like one of them had to do something stupid like that for them to just say OK, NBA season is gonna be over like this.”
It was a high-scoring affair in Cleveland to say the least, as the Cavaliers put up an astonishing 49 points in the first quarter, taking a 16-point lead after the first 12 minutes.
Durant ended up with 35, but Curry was held to just 14 points on 2-9 shooting from 3-point range.
Cleveland was red-hot from behind the arc, on the other hand, making 24 of 45 attempts for an eye-popping 53.3 percent.
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Similar to Malone and his Philadelphia 76ers squad in 1983, the Warriors ended up with just one blemish on an otherwise perfect postseason.
As Murdock mentioned while asking the question, the Game 4 loss did enable the Warriors to do what the team hadn’t done in the 2015 NBA Finals: clinch the championship at home.
The scene inside Oracle Arena that night when the Warriors won the title, Durant’s first in the NBA, is a moment that ranks among the most memorable in franchise history.
While it would have been nice to be the first team to complete a clean postseason sweep, at least that night can serve as a nice consolation prize.
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