1. The Warriors are the rare contending team – you could say the HEAT are one of the few others – that actually has a second, youthful team underneath all of their seasoned veterans. So even without Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, they still had Jordan Poole, Jonathan Kuminga, Gary Payton II, Damion Lee and Andrew Wiggins to form a cohesive unit. It wasn’t too surprising that they were making a game of this, even on a back-to-back, and had things tied, 50-50, at the half.
What was surprising was when the Warriors went up 69-50 early in the third quarter, especially considering the two banked-in threes that helped them get there.