It turns out that what I spent two and a half hours of The Time That Flies watching last night was not a basketball game as we think of it, but a science experiment. Let me spillane:

After Steph Curry’s MRI revealed a hamstring strain that would keep him out at least a week, the Warriors had to face the prospect of several games without him. And the first few minutes of Game 2 showed the worst version of that: the W’s just could not score, going down 13–0 and then 25–7. After that Coach Kerr started emptying the bench, throwing all available bodies into the game to see if anything helped. According to The Athletic, “The Warriors became the first team in playoff history to put 14 different players on the floor in the first half of a playoff game.”

But this was all part of the plan; that same article says:

The 1-0 series lead gave Kerr enough breathing room for experimentation. After he met with his staff at the team hotel Wednesday afternoon, they came up with a tentative strategy: try everything, find something and don’t overtax the stars.

The bad news: Dubs lost by 24 points. The good news is, they showed some signs of life in the second half, pulling to within 7 at one point. And more importantly, they gathered important data about what worked and what didn’t. Today they will hunker down and try to figure out how to use that information in Game 3. Which is, thanks to the pitiless logic of NBA scheduling, tomorrow. I’ll be in Bend, OR, trying to find a good place to watch the game; wish me luck.