WARRIORS RISE TO NEW HEIGHTS
Golden State in West finals for 1st time since 1976
MEMPHIS — When the Warriors are on their game, it is basketball performed at a higher level, somewhere in the clouds, with harps playing. And not the blues harps you hear on Beale Street. Friday night, the Warriors — with that Stephen Curry guy — took their game up to that level. They beat the Grizzlies 108- 95 here in the Grindhouse, where most of the grinding was to the molars of 18,000 fans who watched their beloved grit- and- grind Grizzlies get shot down.
With their 4- 2 series win, the Warriors return to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 1976, a brief 39- year detour in the NBA desert. One year short of Moses and his crew.
The Warriors open the next round at home Tuesday, against the winner of Sunday’s Game 7 between the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers.
The Grizzlies thought they had the Warriors and Curry well- scouted, but they failed to put in an adequate defense against Curry’s 62- foot jump shot. The game’s killer blow came at the buzzer ending the third quarter, as Curry picked up a loose ball in the backcourt and fired a heat- seeking missile that gave the Warriors a 76- 68 lead and put a grin on Curry’s baby face.
Everyone knows Curry is deadly from behind the
three- point line, but who knew he was deadly from behind the other team’s three- point line? Ridiculous.
Curry was voted the NBA’s Most Valuable Player, and he might be the first runaway league MVP ever to come into the playoffs underrated.
There are many experts, TNT’s Charles Barkley is chief spokesman for them, who believe a finesse, jumpshooting team can’t go all the way. They might be right, but that theory is taking an early beating.
Curry hit eight threes on his way to a 32- point night, and chipped in 10 assists and six rebounds. Ridiculous.
Those breezy jumpshooting Warriors hit 15 threes on the night, to four for the Grizz. For the series: 68 threes for the Warriors; 25 for the Grizzlies. But the dirty little secret on Curry and the Warriors is that they play the other end of the court, too. They held Memphis under 100 in all six games.
The critics’ chatter carries the implication that the Warriors are cute, but soft. Tell that to Andrew Bogut, who battled the Grizzlies’ formidable inside game all series long. The Warriors blocked 36 shots in the series, to 14 by the Grizzlies.
In addition, head coach Steve Kerr and his staff devised defensive strategies that had the Grizz scratching their collective head and scrimping for those easy close- in shots that have made Memphis a rugged, quality team, best in that franchise history. No tomato can, they.
But trying to downplay the Warriors’ shooting is like trying to downplay the fireworks on the Fourth of July. If the NBA was a circus, the Warriors would be the trapeze act. Beautiful, daring ... yet dangerous. Acrobats can fall.
The Warriors lost Games 2 and 3 of this series, and there was a growing feeling that the jump- shooting fun had played itself out in the heat of the bump- and-grind nosebleed playoffs, where the lightweights get their lunch taken away.
The Warriors definitely took their lumps in those two losses.
They must have felt like blues rockers ZZ Top, who sang, “I keep thinkin’ ’ bout that night in Memphis, I thought I was in heaven. But I was stumblin’ through the parking lot of an invisible 7- Eleven.”
The Warriors dug themselves out of that bad dream. From the beginning of the playoffs, Kerr talked about how the playoffs are a growth and learning process. Adversity must be met with a fight, or else.
A team must rise to a higher level of focus and intensity. It’s a mystical state that’s hard to define or quantify, but the great teams get there, and the lesser teams go home.
The Warriors got there, at least to Stage Two. They did it Friday by coming out hot- hot, surviving a Grizzlies’ furious comeback, then, well, finding that higher level.
It was an odd game. The Grizzlies shot 30 free throws; the Warriors 14. Warriors’ fans were screaming, but hey, welcome to the wacky, mysterious world of NBA officiating.
The Warriors might be youngish and relatively low on playoff experience, but they’re learning fast. They know their game and they play to it. Death by threes and Killer D. Klay Thompson had three threes, but the deal breaker was Andre Iguodala, who also had three.
Iguodala might be the poster Warrior for grit. He lost his starting job this year but has come off the bench all season as a defensive demon who can stick the dagger three.
The Warriors are only halfway home. They still might wind up bumping their heads on the Barkley jump- shot ceiling. But they’re feeling pretty good right now, and Stephen Curry seems to be finding his range. Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle staff columnist. E- mail: sostler@sfchronicle.com; Twitter @ scottostler