Boston ? Golden State Warriors point guard Speedy Claxton fell on the loose ball and immediately called a timeout. There was 16.9 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and the Warriors trailed by one.
Normally this is a pretty good situation, especially on the road. For the Warriors on Wednesday night at the FleetCenter, it turned out to be another testament of just how valuable injured guard Jason Richardson is to this team.
The Warriors burned two more timeouts and the entire 16.9 seconds without the ball ever touching the rim. The Boston Celtics won, 84-83.
Afterward, coach Mike Montgomery summed up the last three games with one sentence:
“Wish he were out there.”
The Warriors (11-21) played well enough to win an ugly game, which was played to the pace of an Anita Baker song and marred by the two teams combining to shoot 55.6 percent (20-for-36) from the foul line.
The Warriors held the Celtics 17.2 points below their scoring average, including just 12 fourth-quarter points, and they responded every time Boston (15-17) began to pull away. But when it counted, the Warriors didn’t have enough.
After the loss, a frustrated Richardson said he has an MRI scheduled today on his sore left ankle. He said he wants to make it back by Friday’s game at New Jersey, but he acknowledged that’s not likely.
Until he returns, the Warriors — who were also missing guard Mickael Pietrus (sore right ankle) — are going to have to figure out how to score in the clutch if they want to win.
“Anytime you take away a guy who scored 20 points a game, it’s going to be easier (for the defense)” said Warriors power forward Troy Murphy, who finished with 15 points and 16 rebounds. “You take Paul Pierce out of the lineup for (Boston), it would be easier for us.”
The Warriors’ current predicament puts a premium on execution and play calling. In neither area were they successful late in Wednesday’s game.
First the Warriors couldn’t inbound the ball and had to call a timeout, because Celtics point guard Gary Payton denied the pass to Claxton, whom Montgomery desperately wanted to have the ball.
The next try, Payton blanketed Claxton again, and the inbounds pass went to Derek Fisher in the right corner. After a series of passes, head fakes and failed attempts to penetrate, Mike Dunleavy ended up trapped in the left corner and had to call another timeout with 5.3 seconds left.
On the final try, the Warriors’ inbounds pass went to Fisher in the left corner. He wound up hoisting a turnaround jumper that was partially blocked by Ricky Davis. The rebound fell to Payton as the clock expired.
“I wanted to make an inside pivot and face him up,” said Fisher, who finished with 10 points (2-for-9) and six assists. “I didn’t really get the shot that I wanted to get. I take the responsibility.”
The Warriors are 0-3 since Richardson sprained his ankle in practice Friday. All three games have been close losses, but they killed any momentum built from a four-game winning streak.
The Warriors went eight minutes without a field goal in the fourth quarter in a 97-88 loss at Portland on Saturday. In Monday’s 112-104 home loss to Philadelphia, Richardson’s absence wasn’t as detrimental as the Warriors’ poor defense. But they did struggle to score in critical situations late in the game and could never get the basket that would’ve put them over the hump.
Then came Wednesday.
“What we didn’t have was a Jason Richardson to get that shot up,” Montgomery said. “Jason Richardson would have gotten a shot. We had Fish at 6-1 being guarded by (6-7) Ricky Davis … and we couldn’t get any penetration. We just didn’t have that one guy who could really get to the point of attack and that’s what’s going to happen. You have to have the guy who can grab the ball and go by somebody, and we weren’t able to do that.”
