MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Steve Kerr felt Dillon Brooks crossed a line in the first quarter of Game 2 on Tuesday. A line that shouldn’t ever be crossed. A line that Kerr was going to make sure we knew Brooks crossed. We know this because Kerr said it several times on the postgame podium, looking as angry as he’s been in a media setting during his time coaching the Warriors.
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His voice was strained. He spoke bitterly about Brooks’ swinging shot to Gary Payton II’s face, which sent Payton awkwardly to the floor and fractured his left elbow, putting him out indefinitely. The Grizzlies wing was issued a Flagrant 2 foul and ejected. And Kerr was still furious about 10 minutes after the Warriors’ 106-101 loss to Memphis at FedEx Forum that tied the best-of-seven series at 1-1.
“I don’t know if it was intentional, but it was dirty,” Kerr said. “Playoff basketball’s supposed to be physical, everybody’s going to compete, everybody’s going to fight for everything. But there’s a code in this league, there’s a code that players follow. You never put a guy’s season, slash, career in jeopardy by taking somebody out in midair and clubbing him across the head, ultimately fracturing Gary’s elbow. …
“He broke the code. Dillon Brooks broke the code. That’s how I see it.”
Kerr emphasized that Payton has wound his way through professional basketball for years before landing with the Warriors this season, potentially a long-term home. And now he might miss the rest of the playoffs. He’s a free agent this offseason. His whole life might be altered by this.
After the news conference, I asked Kerr if he felt there needs to be any accountability beyond this for Brooks or the Grizzlies.
“It’s up to the league if there’s any accountability,” Kerr said, referring to a possible suspension of Brooks. “I always feel like on a play like that, a player who commits the action should be out as long as the player he injured is out. That would make a lot of sense to me. But it’s not going to work that way. We know that. It’s up to the league to decide what they’re going to do with Brooks. You break the code like that, you put a guy’s season, slash, career at stake, you cross the line.”
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Did you have to warn your guys about possibly trying to retaliate against the Grizzlies in this game or even later in this series, as it moves to Chase Center for Games 3 and 4 on Saturday and Monday?
“That’s not what we’re about,” Kerr said. “I’m a big believer in karma, and I think there’s no way we’re ever going to try to injure anybody. We’re going to play hard, we’re going to compete, but we respect the fact that players are out there playing for their livelihood. They’re playing for their team and their families.
“There’s a brotherhood in the league. This is what I believe as a former player, as a current coach. There’s a brotherhood in the league where you compete like hell against each other, you try to beat each other, but you respect one another and you absolutely do not put someone’s career on the line. And that’s what Brooks did. It’s up to the league to decide what to do.”
This was all part of another very emotional postgame scene for the Warriors, coming after they were infuriated by several calls in their Game 1 victory here Sunday, led by Draymond Green’s Flagrant 2 foul and ejection and several late-game decisions.
On Tuesday, Green was extremely terse after the game. Jordan Poole was terse. Stephen Curry was his usual thoughtful self, but he was clearly displeased with the circumstances, too.
It was a game that started with Payton in excruciating pain after the first-quarter incident, which came when the Grizzlies were bursting out to an 8-0 lead, and was followed by Draymond crashing to the ground, bleeding from above his eye and going to the locker room after catching an elbow to the face from Xavier Tillman. Draymond came back into the game. Payton, of course, did not.
But the Warriors fought back, as they did when Draymond was ejected in the first half Sunday, and they still had many chances to win this game.
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In the end, Ja Morant burst through the Warriors defense too many times in the final minutes, on his way to 47 points, and the Warriors couldn’t match him on their end, firing up several wild shots, making several rushed turnovers and just not looking like the team that pulled out Game 1.
Here’s the balance that was not sustained: GP2 is the Warriors’ best perimeter defender to match up with Morant, which he did quite well Sunday. Without Payton, the Warriors were more exposed on defense. They needed to make up for it on offense, and Curry and Klay Thompson combined to hit five of their 23 3-point attempts.
“There’s a good chance (Payton) would’ve been in (for some of the plays),” Kerr said of the late-game defensive situation against Morant. “Obviously, the defense on Morant was hurting us and Gary’s our best defender, so … you never know how the game would’ve panned out with him there for the whole game. I think it is too simple to say that, but it’s safe to say we missed him quite a bit.”
But Kerr said the game was mostly lost on offense, not defense. He closed the game with the Warriors’ famous small lineup — Curry, Klay, Jordan Poole, Andrew Wiggins and Green — and the unit just didn’t have the patience to attack the Memphis defense in any organized way.
If the Warriors are going to move deeper into the playoffs, this unit will struggle some defensively. But it can’t get lost on offense. It has to solve other problems, not create its own.
“Yeah, Morant was brilliant. He made some amazing plays,” Kerr said. “Even with that, they scored 106 points, they shot 39 percent. Our defense played well enough to win. Our offense let us down. We were rushed and we had, I think, 17 turnovers. But we had 15 or 20 what we call shot-turnovers. Poor shots, quick shots that are challenged. For us, we’re going to have to get to the point where we understand good shots for each other is the ticket.
“If we get there, we’re going to win. I feel strongly about that. If we don’t commit to that, it’s going to be tough for us.”
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Klay, in particular, seemed antsy to shoot and keep shooting, even though his jumper just wasn’t there. That’s another balance: When do you want shooters to pull back just a little and move the ball around a bit, maybe to make sure the Warriors can get the right guy the ball in the right place to attack Morant’s defense?
The Warriors specifically use this small lineup to make sure there’s no easy matchup for the opponent’s defense. To go right at the weakest spot. And that didn’t happen much Tuesday.
“It’s kind of our nature in terms of letting it fly all over the court,” Curry said. “But there’s another level of awareness in terms of, I don’t think they really did anything to take us out of good possessions. We just were either rushing, trying to force a pass that wasn’t there or rushing turned into quick shots that obviously you take them because you think you can make them, but you have to have the awareness of the way the game is going and what’s really going to help us win a game like we had an opportunity to tonight.
“With Ja doing what he was doing every possession, he was making us pay on the defensive end, we were coming down kind of letting him off the hook a little bit with the shots that we were taking. We have to settle into what’s really going to help us win games against a team like this.”
What we know is that the Warriors will be without GP2 for a while. Their defense will suffer, especially if Andre Iguodala, who has been out with a neck problem, can’t come back soon. They’re already playing small. They were hit by Memphis’ desperate, full commitment to physical play Tuesday, and even without Payton they held up. Until the end. With the group made up of their best five offensive players.
“I thought we had some ill-advised field goal attempts,” Kerr said. “I thought we had a couple of advantages in transition and could’ve had better shots. I didn’t think our shot selection down the stretch or frankly throughout the game was very good. So that’s what we’ve gotta clean up.
“It’s easy to say, all right, 7 for 38 from 3, we’ll make more. And I’m confident we will make more. But we’ve gotta help ourselves by taking good shots and creating easy shots for each other. Because they’re there. They’re there for the taking if we want them. Thought we were really over-anxious and took a lot of bad shots tonight.”
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And his thoughts on Klay’s 5-for-19 night:
“It wasn’t great. I thought our shot selection in general was poor. We’ll look at the tape. Guys will have the day off tomorrow and we’ll come in the next day and watch tape. And there will be lots to look at. Sometimes in the playoffs you get over-anxious. You get overly aggressive because you’re trying so hard. I thought we tried too hard tonight.”
The Warriors knew what was coming from Memphis and, except for one terrible moment at the beginning and several careless minutes at the end, the Warriors were fine with it. They should be able to handle it in Games 3 and 4 and maybe can finish this series up in Game 5 back at FedEx Forum, which after Games 1 and 2 has left them beat up, angry and minus a key player. But with all things still possible for them. What a wild few days.
(Photo: Brandon Dill / Associated Press)
