San Francisco (KRON) Warriors fever is at its height tonight. Game 5 against the Grizzlies tonight at Oracle was
The Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks spent all season earning home-court advantage in the playoffs, quickly lost it in the second round, and then regained it.
Whether they’ve rediscovered their regular-season form is another matter.
The NBA’s top seeds are headed back home for pivotal Game 5s in their knotted up series. The Hawks host the banged-up Washington Wizards, and the Warriors welcome the gritty Memphis Grizzlies in Oakland tonight.
“The only thing we’ve done is get home court back, which is great. But there’s no guarantees of anything,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after arriving in the Bay Area on Tuesday. “You have to compete. You got to play. We have to come with the same mindset, the same approach.”
After going down 2-1 and having their dream seasons on the brink of turning into nightmares, the Warriors and Hawks turned in series-saving performances on the road. Both clamped down on defense and got back to the ball-movement based systems that made them regular-season juggernauts.
“There’s nothing like going through good times and bad times or difficult games and quarters or situations in playoff games and understanding how to work your way through that,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “That’s why people talk about playoff experience. That’s why people, I think, appreciate teams and players and people that maybe have more of those experiences and can draw from them and understand.
“We are building that and growing that. But at the end of the day, you either get it done or you don’t. So we want to be of the mindset that we want to get it done.”