The Toronto Raptors nearly pulled off a late fourth quarter comeback, but Andre Iguodala had other plans for his Golden State Warriors.
The Raptors trailed by five points with 51 seconds remaining in the game. Fred VanVleet missed a 3-point attempt, but Danny Green was there to grab the offensive board. He got the ball in the hands of Kawhi Leonard and when Leonard missed a runner in the lane, Pascal Siakam came up with a clutch offensive rebound to keep the possession alive. The ball was kicked out to Green, who knocked down a massive 3-pointer to make it a two-point game with 26 seconds on the clock.
Toronto was scrambling on the defensive end to try and come up with a steal to give themselves a chance to tie or win the game. As the clock ticked down and the Warriors moved the ball around to avoid being trapped, Stephen Curry nearly turned the ball over. Shaun Livingston corralled Curry's pass and made a split-second decision to make the extra pass to a wide open Iguodala.
Iguodala knocked down the clutch shot to close out the game.
ANDRE 🔒 pic.twitter.com/WqoMHfEPsX
— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) June 3, 2019
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"The whole fourth quarter they were playing some janky defense just trying to send bodies to me everywhere and our whole roster just took advantage of it," Curry told ESPN's Doris Burke following the win.
"Over the course of the game, that's kind of disrespectful to leave Andre Iguodala open like that with the game on the line. He's made big shots like that before and he got it done tonight."
Draymond Green wasn't surprised at Iguodala's ability to knock down the big shot either, "I think that as big as Andre's shot was, we have come to expect on Andre to hit big shots. Since he's been here I've seen him hit several game winners. I've seen him put the icing on the cake on several wins."
The media also asked Kawhi his thoughts on the back-breaking shot, to which Leonard had a very literal response.
He was asked if the Raptors wanted to see the ball in Iguodala's hands to attempt the shot that put the game away, to which he responded, "No, we wanted to see it in our hands. We wanted to get the steal."
The steal would have given the Raptors a chance to send the game to OT or take a 2-0 lead, but Iguodala stepped up and buried the biggest shot of the contest to crush Toronto's Game 2 hopes.
Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said his team should have fouled, but he wasn't upset with the shot that the Warriors got.
"I think if they're going to take a shot and give you a chance there, I'm going to probably live with the one that ended up being taken.
"I'm going to probably roll with that. Probably we should have fouled before that, but like I said, he misses that we call timeout, we go down with a chance to win the ball game unbelievably, somehow."
The Raptors will have two days to mull things over from the loss before taking on the Warriors at Oracle Arena for Game 3 on Thursday.
