CLEVELAND — The level of tension is growing rapidly for the Golden State Warriors. Someone gets suspended, someone gets hurt, someone gets ejected, and lots of someones make no effort to hide their frustration. A comfortable two-game lead in the NBA Finals becomes a dicey one-game lead, then no lead at all.
The biggest moment awaits.
The biggest challenge does, too.
Shots aren’t falling for the Warriors at the same rate they were in the regular season, stops aren’t coming like they were a couple months ago either, the aches and pains are piling up and what looked like a sure-fire title not long ago is at best a shaky proposition now. Game 7 of the finals is on Sunday against the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Golden State is hoping being at home helps deliver a championship-saving elixir.
‘‘Things haven’t gone our way despite how the regular season went,’’ Warriors guard Stephen Curry said. ‘‘The playoffs haven’t been easy. Hasn’t been a breeze. Hasn’t been anything perfect about it. So, yeah, it’s frustrating, but the work we've put in and the opportunity we've given ourselves with a Game 7 to win the finals at home, you've got to be excited about that.’’
The Warriors got questions for months — starting around December, believe it or not — about whether they were concerned that the strain of chasing Chicago’s 72-win mark that stood as the NBA’s gold standard for 20 years would leave them ailing or fatigued at playoff time.
Questions like those seem a bit more valid now.
To be clear, Andrew Bogut’s left knee didn’t become susceptible to season-ending bone bruises because of how difficult becoming the league’s first 73-win regular-season team was; J.R. Smith crashing into him in Game 5 of this series took care of that. Curry’s combination of fouling out, mouthpiece-throwing and getting ejected in Game 6 on Thursday night wasn’t because the first 82 games left him tired and cranky. And the Warriors’ inability to corral LeBron James in this series can be best explained by acknowledging again that when James is at his best he’s the most unstoppable force in the game.
The grind of March and April has nothing to do with any of that.
But it can certainly be argued that even though the Warriors spent about half the season without head coach Steve Kerr while he recovered from back surgeries and got every opponent’s best shot in every game — such is life for reigning champions — the playoffs have delivered more challenges in 20something games (including a 3-1 deficit in the Western Conference finals against Oklahoma City) than the first 82 offered combined.
‘‘I think if you start out every season and you say ‘We get a Game 7, we get one game at home to win the NBA championship,’ I'll take it every time,’’ Kerr said.
‘‘So I can’t wait for Sunday. I think we'll be fine. Obviously Cleveland has played well the last two games, and we've got to play better. But I'm confident we will. We’re in a spot that 29 other teams would love to be in.’’
If the Warriors — who are still steamed that Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5 because he accrued one too many flagrant fouls in this postseason — find calls more to their liking in Game 7, that'll be money extremely well spent.
‘‘We’re going to need some emotion and some grit and toughness,’’ said Curry, who noted the Warriors are already 3-0 in elimination games this season.
Their problems go deeper than officiating issues, though. The Warriors don’t have a single starter shooting 50 percent in this series, are clearly a different defensive team with Bogut sidelined, have 2015 Finals MVP Andre Iguodala playing with wince-inducing lower back soreness, have yielded two straight 41-point games to James and are in their first extended slide of the season — losing three times in a four-game span.
If shots fall at their usual clip on Sunday, the Warriors will probably win.
Otherwise, a team that looks like it’s limping to the finish could see its reign end.
''We all realize if you told us at the beginning of the season it would be one game to win the championship in Oakland, we'll take that any day of the week,’’ shooting guard Klay Thompson said. ‘‘We've just got to come Sunday with the mindset of leave it all out there, every man on this team. No hero ball, just do it as a team like we've been doing it all year.’’
Kerr, Curry fined
Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry let their frustrations with Game 6 be known, and it came at a price. Each was fined $25,000 by the NBA on Friday for separate incidents. Kerr, the league’s coach of the year, was fined for publicly criticizing officiating after his team’s 115-101 loss. Curry was fined for throwing his mouthpiece into the stands after fouling out of the game with 4:22 left.
Kerr took issue with three of the six fouls that were called on Curry in the game, even calling referee Jason Phillips out by name for the one that ended the night for the two-time reigning NBA MVP.
‘‘Three of the six fouls were incredibly inappropriate calls for anybody, much less the MVP of the league,’’ Kerr said in his postgame news conference, surely knowing that the league would be sending a bill for those remarks.
Curry didn’t like many of the calls either, and let some words — and his mouthpiece — fly after fouling out. Phillips also tacked on a technical and ejected Curry, who apologized almost immediately to the fan he hit inadvertently with the mouthpiece.
‘‘I'm happy he threw his mouthpiece,’’ Kerr said postgame . ‘‘He should be upset. Look, it’s the finals and everybody’s competing out there. There are fouls on every play. It’s a physical game. ... If they’re going to let Cleveland grab and hold these guys constantly on their cuts and then you’re going to call these ticky-tack fouls on the MVP of the league to foul him out, I don’t agree with that.’’
It was Curry’s first ejection, and his time fouling out since Dec. 13, 2013.
‘‘It got the best of me,’’ Curry said, ‘‘but I'll be all right for next game.’’
Ratings take a hit
With another lopsided score, Game 6 averaged more than 20.7 million viewers on ABC, down about 11 percent from the nearly 23.3 million for last season’s Game 6, when Golden State clinched the championship.
‘Uncalled for’
With a click, Ayesha Curry made herself a part of the NBA Finals story. Steph Curry’s wife spoke out loudly on social media with a tweet suggesting Thursday night’s game was rigged.
‘‘I've lost all respect sorry this is absolutely rigged for money . . . Or ratings in not sure which,’’ she tweeted near the end of the game. ‘‘I won’t be silent. Just saw it live sry [sorry].’’ She later deleted the “rigged’’ tweet and said she “tweeted in the heat of the moment because the call was uncalled for.’’
But she also tweeted that police had racially profiled her father and told him to remove his credentials. Before the game, she tweeted that her cousin hadn’t been allowed into an area casino earlier Thursday because he was wearing Warriors gear.
‘‘I'm OK that we lost . . . I just can’t take people coming at my family for absolutely no reason,’’ she said in a separate tweet. ‘‘Something I don’t understand or stand for.’’
