Without Stephen Curry, the team would need to play their game and win together. Shaun Livingston joined the starting lineup and Andre Iguodala came off the bench as usual.
In Game 2, he supplied the Golden State Warriors with a great game. He finished with 18 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block in 33 minutes. He genuinely was fantastic, and that led head coach Steve Kerr to singing his praises during the postgame media scrum.
From Monte Poole, columnist for CSN Bay Area dot com:
“It reminded me of The Finals,” coach Steve Kerr said, recalling Iguodala’s MVP effort last June. “Andre has a knack for just kind of knowing when we need him. He hasn’t been shooting the ball all that well since he returned from the ankle injury, and he hits four threes in the first quarter, first half, anyway, but it doesn’t surprise me. He was brilliant. He carried our second unit while he was out there. He guarded James Harden. He controlled the game, I thought, when he was out there.”
It’s a big compliment for Kerr to refer to what Iguodala did in Game 2 as something that reminded him of The Finals. Iguodala was sensational in the 2015 NBA Finals en route to winning Finals MVP, so that praise this early could mean that Iguodala is ready to repeat.
With the status of Curry being widely unknown for the rest of this series, and it might be best for the Warriors to not even play him much at all here against Houston, the value of Andre Iguodala just skyrocketed. If he continues playing like this, then no team may even win a game against Golden State in the playoffs.