The Warriors Tried Calling A Timeout On Their Disastrous Final Possession In Game 4

The Rockets and Warriors will, essentially, play a best two out of three series to determine which team makes the NBA Finals. Houston stole Game 4 from Golden State in Oracle Arena, picking up a 95-92 victory. Now, they have homecourt advantage over the final two or three games of this series.

One of the biggest moments in Game 4 came on Golden State’s final full possession, in which they trailed by two. They decided to play it out and not use their one time out, which led to an absolutely ghastly possession and an awful miss by Klay Thompson. The Rockets got the rebound, Chris Paul made one of two free throws, and the series is now tied at two games a piece.

The big question that popped up after this possession was why on earth didn’t Golden State use a time out to settle things down, especially considering they looked tired and disjointed for much of the fourth quarter? As it turns out, they tried to do just that, as Steve Kerr revealed in his postgame press conference.

“I wanted the timeout. Draymond was trying to call one around four seconds once he got trapped. At that point, the officials weren’t looking. They’re not gonna look down at our bench.”

Kerr did say that he believes in pushing the ball and trying to get a shot in transition, but still, having a request for a timeout go unnoticed is a brutal break for Golden State. As you can see, Green does clearly try to call one after Thompson gets into some trouble from where he’s standing above the three-point line.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that calling a timeout would have worked — Golden State, especially their two biggest guns, went ice cold during the fourth quarter. It’s still an unfortunate turn of events for the Warriors, especially because as we saw on what ended up being the final possession, Kerr was able to design a play that got Curry a great look.