SI:AM | The Warriors Finally Gave Steph Some Help

Plus, when the NCAA battled it out with the AIAW.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The Celtics have their work cut out for them if the Warriors’ role players can bring their energy to Boston.

In today’s SI:AM:

🌁 Golden State’s supporting cast

🏀 The other governing body for women’s college basketball

🇦🇺 Australia’s dancing goalie

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Steph didn’t need to do it all

Andrew Wiggins won’t win Finals MVP, but he did win Game 5 for the Warriors.

Through the first four games of the Finals, the narrative has been that Stephen Curry needs to do everything for Golden State. He scored 34 points in Game 1, and his team still lost by 12. He had 31 in Game 3, another double-digit loss. If I had missed the game last night and just saw Curry’s stat line this morning—16 points on 7-of-22 shooting (0-for-9 from three), eight assists and three rebounds—I would have assumed it was a blowout loss for the Warriors. But no, his teammates came through in a major way to take a 3–2 advantage in the series.

The Warriors got solid contributions from Klay Thompson (21 points), Gary Payton II (15) and Jordan Poole (14), but it was Wiggins who had the game of his life, with 26 points and 13 rebounds. It was just the latest step in Wiggins revitalizing his career in the Bay, Chris Mannix writes:

“This season has been about redemption for Wiggins. The No. 1 pick in 2014, Wiggins failed to play up to his potential in six seasons in Minnesota. In 2020, the Warriors acquired Wiggins—along with a first-round pick—in a deal for D’Angelo Russell. Offered stability for the first time in his career, Wiggins, who played for four head coaches in Minnesota, thrived. Last season, Wiggins averaged 18.6 points in 71 games, connecting on 38% of his three-point attempts. This year Wiggins averaged 17.2 points while shooting 39.3% of his threes. He was named an All-Star starter. He developed into Golden State’s top wing defender. Kerr has called Wiggins the ‘key move’ to reviving the Warriors dynasty.”

With all of Wiggins’s contributions on the offensive end, his role as a key cog in the Warriors’ stout defense is easy to overlook. But the only reason Golden State was able to overcome a down night from Steph is that the defense locked down on the Celtics when it mattered most.

Boston, which had struggled mightily in third quarters during this series, flipped the script last night and shot 57.9% from the field in the third while outscoring the Warriors 35–24. But Golden State’s defense dialed in during the fourth, allowing the Celtics to hit just 26.7% of their shots as the Warriors closed out the win.

For Curry, his off night snapped a bunch of record-long streaks. He had made at least one three-pointer in all of his 132 postseason games and had gone 233 straight games (regular season and playoffs combined) with a three-pointer. The last time he played a game without making a three was Nov. 8, 2018. It was only the fifth time in Curry’s career that he took at least seven threes and didn’t make any of them.

The Warriors are now one win away from another NBA championship. Even though he wasn’t the star in Game 5, the elusive Finals MVP award could still be Curry’s as long as Golden State can pull it off. If the supporting cast plays as well in Boston on Thursday night as it did last night, that shouldn’t be much of a question.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Thomas P. Costello/Forgotten Champions

In today’s Daily Cover, Mark Bechtel recounts how two organizations—the NCAA and AIAW—battled to be the boss of women’s sports in the early days after Title IX:

“For the first time in its history—and nearly 10 years after the passage of Title IX—the NCAA was sponsoring women’s championships. Until the 1981–82 school year, that had been the province of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which both came into existence and held its first basketball tournament in ’72. With the two governing bodies each offering a trophy, schools could choose their tournament. That Tech and Cheyney went with the NCAA—which offered more perks, such as paying for transportation—was no surprise. Of the top 20 teams, 17 made the same choice.”

The Warriors’ win puts them on the brink of what would be their most unexpected championship, Howard Beck writes. … Phil Mickelson torched his fan-favorite status as golf’s everyman to cash a check from the Saudis, Michael Rosenberg writes. … Tom Verducci makes the case for taking the Guardians—and their underappreciated superstar, José Ramírez—seriously.

Around the sports world

Braves All-Star Ozzie Albies broke his foot in last night’s game. … Montrezl Harrell was arrested on felony drug charges after a traffic stop in Kentucky. … Tony Buzbee, the Houston lawyer representing the 24 women who have sued Deshaun Watson, said he expects two more lawsuits to be filed soon. … USWNT forward Christen Press has torn her ACL. … The full field for the men’s College World Series is set.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Klay Thompson talking about the ocean after Game 5

4. Andrew Wiggins’s dunk in the fourth quarter

3. Jordan Poole’s buzzer beater at the end of the third quarter

2. Lance Lynn’s explanation for why he was yelling at third base coach Joe McEwing

1. Dancing goalie Andrew Redmayne’s penalty save to send Australia to the World Cup

SIQ

Pat Summitt, one of the most accomplished college basketball coaches in history, was born on this day in 1952. How old was she when she was hired as the head coach at Tennessee? 

Yesterday’s SIQ: Who did Matt Cain tie in 2012 with 14 strikeouts in a perfect game?

Answer: Sandy Koufax. Koufax struck out 14 on 113 pitches in his perfect game on Sept. 9, 1965, at home against the Cubs. Of the 21 perfect games in modern MLB history, only 11 have featured double-digit strikeouts and only four have had at least 12.

Cain needed 125 pitches to get through the game, the most ever in a perfect game. (David Wells is second with 120.)

The 2012 season was a weird one with regard to perfect games. Cain’s game against the Astros was the second perfect game of the season, following Philip Humber’s on April 21. Félix Hernández went on to throw yet another perfect game two months later, against the Rays. It’s the only season in modern MLB history (post-1903) with three perfect games and one of two in which multiple perfect games were thrown (2010, by Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay, 20 days apart).

Even more incredibly, two umpires worked two of those games in 2012. The home plate umpire for Cain’s perfect game was Ted Barrett, who had been the third base ump for Humber’s game. Brian Runge, who was behind the plate when Humber was on the mound, was at third for Cain’s game. Barrett has been on the field for three perfect games (14% of all perfect games), having called balls and strikes for David Cone’s in 1999. He’s the only umpire to be behind the plate for multiple perfect games.

From the Vault: June 14, 1971

Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated

The 1971 Belmont Stakes was one in a long line of races in which a horse, having already won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, was attempting to capture the elusive Triple Crown. The horse that year was Cañonero II, who seemed to have a chance to become the first horse since Citation in ’48 to win the Triple Crown. In reality, he never stood a chance.

Cañonero was born in Kentucky and sold to Venezuelan owners who trained him there. After winning in Louisville and Baltimore, he had attracted legions of fans in the U.S., William F. Reed wrote in SI before the Belmont:

“Seldom has a horse story so enchanted the American public, or offered such enchanting elements. Cañonero, the colt who was first sold for $1,200 and is now reportedly worth $5 million, has become an instant celebrity, and so has an astonishing trio of Venezuelans who are responsible for the achievements of their unlikely animal.”

Reed wrote in that article that it “seems likely enough” the horse would prevail in New York to win the Triple Crown, but a Scorecard item in the following week’s magazine reported that Cañonero was suffering from a variety of ailments: a skin disease, an ankle issue and thrush (a fungal infection in the hoof). Still, because Cañonero’s owners kept quiet about his condition, the public was still very much behind him and turned out in large numbers to cheer him on—and bet heavily on him.

But the injuries had cost Cañonero valuable training time, and he was simply not ready to run the full race (which is a quarter mile longer than the Derby and 5/16 of a mile longer than the Preakness). He ended up finishing fourth. Here’s what Whitney Tower wrote after the race:

“Wishfully anticipating that Cañonero would be ready when he went postward, the sentimental crowd made him the odds-on favorite. Sadly, the betting was wrong.

“It was wrong because the public was not officially informed—until after the race—that Cañonero was, in racing terminology, ‘short’ to run a mile and a half. As veterinarian Dr. William O. Reed noted the morning after the Belmont, when Cañonero was still showing signs of extreme fatigue, ‘The horse was in perfect physical condition on Belmont Day and his injuries were as minor as was stated to the press. But because of the two-day interruption in training he was only 75% prepared to run a mile and a half. He was not in a position to do himself any physical harm. But, as I told his handlers, they were gambling that the horse could win the race without sufficient conditioning. They had a lot to gain and—after all—the horse only missed by four lengths.’ It is most regrettable the general public was not made privy to this explicit information before it bet more than $1 million on Cañonero.”

There has been an increased focus in recent years on the well-being of racehorses, which, combined with increased scrutiny on sports betting as a result of it becoming more widely legalized, makes it hard to imagine that a situation like Cañonero’s could happen today. It brings to mind the decision by Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike’s owners to hold the horse out of the Preakness in order to protect his health.

Cañonero may have come up short in his bid, but horse racing fans didn’t have to wait long for another Triple Crown. Two years later in 1973, Secretariat captured all three races.

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

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