Game 5 Review: Wiggins saves Curry

(Photo courtesy of USA Today)

the Golden State Warriors won game five of the 2022 NBA Finals 104-94 to take a decisive 3-2 series lead over the Boston Celtics, June 13. This gritty win came in spite of a horrendous shooting performance from Stephen Curry who went 0-9 from three and 7-22 from the field overall, for 16 points.

That’s what made the win all the more shocking and impressive. Taking the mantle from Stephen Curry was Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins played a phenomenal game, perhaps the best he’s ever played. Wiggins had 26 points on 12-23 shooting from the field with 13 rebounds on top of fantastic defense on Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

Another big storyline from game five was the lack of production from the Celtics bench. Boston got almost nothing from their bench, which had been outperforming Golden State’s bench for almost the entire series. The Celtics bench combined for 10 points, six of those points coming from two three’s courtesy of Luke Kornet and Aaron Nesmith in garbage time late in the fourth.

So take that away and Boston’s bench was outscored 31-4. Gary Payton II outscored all of Boston’s bench by himself, scoring 15 points on 6-8 shooting, off the bench.

What is simultaneously concerning for Boston and extremely encouraging for Golden State is that Boston handled Stephen Curry as well as they possibly could. Steph is not going to go 0-9 from three again in this series, not even close.

At the end of the day, Andrew Wiggins might be playing himself into Finals MVP consideration, and Boston needs to cut down the turnovers and get more from their bench, if they don’t do those things, this series will be over this Thursday.