Battle-tested Warriors take on surging Mavericks

May 17, 2022 World Sports

The Golden State Warriors and Dallas Mavericks are set to meet in the Western Conference finals beginning in San Francisco on Wednesday (9 ET, TNT), with both teams taking bumpy roads to get here.

The Warriors finished with the conference’s No. 3 seed despite Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green sharing only a combined 11 regular-season minutes amid overlapping injuries. They dispatched the Denver Nuggets in five games in the first-round only to meet a young and physical second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies team that pushed them to six games.

The Mavericks finished with the fourth seed and held onto relative optimism that Luka Doncic’s brilliance, Jason Kidd’s arrival and a mid-season trade would finally help them advance past the first-round. They did, knocking off the Utah Jazz in six games and then upsetting the top-seeded Phoenix Suns in seven.