SI:AM | Learning From the Celtics’ Comeback

Plus, the College World Series are underway.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I did indeed stay awake for the whole Finals game, although I’m not sure the Warriors did.

In today’s SI:AM:

​​☘️ A legendary fourth quarter

🥎 The College World Series are underway

🎾 An American teen goes for her first major title

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Are the Warriors in trouble?

We’ve seen plenty of Warriors games since Steve Kerr took over eight years ago that have been decided by furious fourth-quarter scoring binges. Golden State hasn’t been on the wrong side of very many of them.

But that’s exactly what happened in Game 1 of the NBA Finals last night as the Celtics flipped the script in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Warriors 40–16 en route to a 120–108 win. In an almost five-minute period late in the game, the Dubs couldn’t score. And now the Warriors are not only down 0–1 in the series, they have to reckon with the fact that they got blown off the court in the game’s most important moments. It’s completely unfamiliar territory for Golden State, Howard Beck writes:

“It’s your advantage on this stage. Until it isn’t. Until the opponent with zero championships and zero Finals and a bunch of young, still-developing stars

blitz you for 10 straight minutes

on your home court. And then, all that familiarity and experience feel like a tattered, moth-riddled security blanket.

“Sure, the Golden State Warriors have been down in playoff series before, and knocked off kilter in the Finals before. But not often. And never like this.”

Boston’s fourth-quarter barrage—led by Al Horford and Jaylen Brown—came as a direct response to Stephen Curry’s outburst in the first 36 minutes. As Chris Mannix wrote, “When the Celtics get punched, more often than not they punch back.”

When the Warriors need to punch back, it’s usually Draymond Green who does the punching. And judging by this quote, he’s ready to even the score.

“We pretty much dominated the game for the first 41, 42 minutes,” Green said. “We’ll be fine.”

It’s time for the College World Series

Two of the most exciting tournaments in college sports are underway. The Division I baseball tournament gets started today with the regional round, while the Women’s College World Series began yesterday.

Let’s just go over the format of the tournaments quickly for the uninitiated.

• Both NCAA tournaments feature 64 teams.
• The teams are placed in groups of four (called Regionals) that play a double-elimination round robin, with the winner advancing to the Super Regionals.
• The Super Regionals are played as a best-of-three series, and the eight winners advance to the College World Series.
• In the CWS, teams are again placed into groups of four, playing a double-elimination round robin, with the two winners of each group squaring off in a best-of-three series.

If that’s all confusing, there is one thing that is very straightforward about the softball tournament: Oklahoma is a nightmare. The Sooners, who have qualified for every NCAA tournament since 1994, are the defending champions and looked quite capable of repeating as champs in their 13–2 win over Northwestern yesterday. Oklahoma is led by redshirt senior Jocelyn Alo, the NCAA’s all-time leader in career home runs, with 117 (the previous record was 95). She’s also second in the nation this year with a .497 batting average. For a deeper look at the WCWS field, check out Wilton Jackson’s preview.

The men’s tournament is just getting started, though. There’s a good chance that the first game is being played right as you’re reading this (Miami vs. Canisius at 10 a.m. ET on ESPN+). Tennessee earned the top seed in this tournament after going 53–7, winning the SEC regular season and conference titles. Other highly seeded teams include No. 2 Stanford, No. 3 Oregon State and No. 4 Virginia Tech.

The Volunteers’ pitching staff has dominated opponents, leading the nation with a 2.35 team ERA (far ahead of second-place Southern Miss’s 3.16). The offense has also been elite, scoring 561 runs (9.4 per game), which is second best in the nation.

The tournaments will be on TV all weekend. ESPN has the coverage, with the softball getting top billing this weekend. Those games will air mostly on ESPN and ESPN2, with two games slated for ABC tomorrow and Sunday. (How cool is it that college softball will be on network television?) The baseball games will be broadcast primarily on ESPN+ and the conference networks (SEC Network and ACC Network). Today alone there are 32 baseball games and two softball games. Go ahead and cancel all your other plans.

The best of Sports Illustrated

In today’s Daily Cover story, Albert Breer checks in on new Raiders coach Josh McDaniels.

“Instead, on this spring afternoon, [McDaniels]’s trying to bring to life the vision he and [GM Dave] Ziegler have set out, to reinvigorate one of the NFL’s most iconic brands after a year of nonstop tumult inside the franchise. And once you dig into it, you’ll see that what McDaniels is doing in pointing to that lot is actually the opposite of chest-thumping. Because this vision of his, and theirs, is really a result of being humbled, being reflective and trying to be better.”

Conor Orr paid tribute to Frank Gore after the news of his retirement. … Jimbo Fisher is putting his feud with Nick Saban behind him, and Pat Forde thinks the rest of college football should do the same. …Jon Wertheim and Chris Almeida discuss American teenager Coco Gauff and her breakthrough to the French Open women’s singles final against top-ranked Iga Swiatek. … Emma Baccellieri wonders whether MLB’s move to 13 pitchers will help boost offenses. … Christian Pulisic looked more like himself this week in the USMNT’s win over Morocco, Brian Straus writes. They play Uruguay on Sunday in a friendly.

Around the sports world

The Phillies have fired manager Joe Girardi. ... An assistant football coach at Idaho State was arrested on murder charges in connection with a 2017 shooting. … The Gonzaga men’s basketball team added a big transfer target. … Browns players explained on the Varsity House podcast how the relationship between Baker Mayfield and Odell Beckham Jr. “was just off.” … Harini Logan is the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee champ, which the 14-year-old won in a spell-off. … You have to see this video of Logan’s speed-spelling round. … Hideki Matsyuma was DQ’d from this week’s PGA Tour tournament for using a “nonconforming club.” … It’s the end of the road for “Fitzmagic.”

The top five...

… Celtics shots during their fourth-quarter run:

5. Marcus Smart’s three to push the lead to 14 with less than two minutes left

4. Rob Williams’s alley-oop

3. Derrick White from the wing with Stephen Curry all over him to tie it at 103

2. Jaylen Brown’s fadeaway three from the corner

1. Al Horford gives Boston a 106–103 lead

SIQ

How many Power 5 schools do not have a varsity baseball program?

Yesterday’s SIQ: Before Connor McDavid this year, who were the last three NHL players (all during the 1995–96 season) to record 150 points in the regular season and postseason combined?

Answer: Joe Sakic, Jaromír Jágr and Mario Lemieux.

Lemieux actually recorded 161 points in the regular season that year. He and Wayne Gretzky are the only players to ever have that many points in a season. Since Lemieux’s big 1995–96 season, there have been only eight individual seasons that have surpassed the 120-point threshold—three by Jágr and one each by Lemieux, Joe Thorton, Sidney Crosby, McDavid and Nikita Kucherov, whose 128 points in 2018–19 are tops in that time frame. 

From the Vault: June 3, 1991

Manny Millan/Sports Illustrated

I could probably feature a Bulls cover in this spot for every day in the month of June, but I won’t be doing that. Instead, let’s just look at the cover from the first time the team made the NBA Finals.

This was well covered in The Last Dance, but Michael Jordan’s Bulls had a hell of a time getting past the Pistons before 1991. Detroit had beaten Chicago in the playoffs three years in a row (once in the conference semis and twice in the conference finals), but the Bulls finally got over the hump in the ’91 conference finals. Getting over the hump is putting it mildly, actually. The Bulls ran straight through their rivals, as Jack McCallum wrote:

“My, what a thoroughly enjoyable time the Chicago Bulls had in their Eastern Conference finals against the Detroit Pistons. By the time the Bulls wrapped up a four-game sweep with a 115–94 victory on Monday afternoon at The Palace of Auburn Hills, they had become the haughty hunters, forcing the Pistons into the unfamiliar, and singularly unappetizing, role of the humble hunted. Three straight years of postseason frustration were all but obliterated by Chicago’s sweep, which almost no one had considered even a remote possibility.”

The kicker to McCallum’s article will also be familiar to anyone who watched ESPN’s Bulls documentary:

“The Bulls are a lot better than most observers had thought—including one Michael Jeffrey Jordan, whose constant complaint during this and recent seasons was that Chicago general manager Jerry Krause had not supplied him with enough help.

‘I can reconsider my words,’ said Jordan, when asked after Game 3 about his criticism of Krause. ‘I can even eat them.’”

It’s interesting to look back on this story—and the one McCallum wrote three weeks later after the Bulls beat the Lakers in five games—to see how Chicago’s win wasn’t really regarded as a changing of the guard. There was no indication that it was the beginning of the NBA’s greatest modern dynasty. McCallum wrote, “for those who felt that Jordan was already the king, consider the 1991 Finals his coronation,” but he didn’t suggest that the Bulls were poised to run rampant through the NBA. Why? Because it would have been silly to predict a stretch of dominance like the one Chicago went on to have.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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