By Ernesto Nodado III

PHOTO: Reuters

Gold just never rusts.

Golden State Warriors climbed back on top of basketball supremacy after seasons of injury mishaps, winning the NBA championship in Game 6 with a telling 103-90 victory over the gutsy Boston Celtics in TD Garden, Friday.

The Bay Area squad opened the floodgates early with a sizable 21-0 barrage in the first half, while withstanding the last-ditch efforts of the Celtics in the latter moments, to clinch their fourth title in seven years.

Averaging 31.2 points, Stephen Curry showed vindication in his finals performance with a masterful 34-point outing to nab his first Finals MVP out of four championships.

“You always have a doubt, but you know how long the road is to get back here because how hard it is to win at this level,” Curry said in the post-match interview on the ABC broadcast.

Andrew Wiggins capped off his first title with 18 markers while Klay Thompson, who made his return after his ACL injury in 2019, and Draymond Green contributed 12 apiece.

The Warriors struggled for a long time to find their championship footing since their 2019 Finals loss and the departure of superstar Kevin Durant, but rebuilt their way to find new reinforcements in Jordan Poole and Gary Payton Jr.    

Poole and Payton Jr., who barely missed the 15-man lineup, combined for 21 points while playing pivotal minutes as the Warriors rose from a 2-1 series deficit to win the title.

Golden State looked like they wanted to end the long wait from the get-go, blasting an 11-0 run to zoom into a 27-22 lead in the first quarter after Jordan Poole’s triple.

The Warriors continued to wreak havoc as they put up another 21-0 spread in the second frame, capitalizing on the Celtics’ 12 early turnovers, to cement a 15-point lead at halftime, 54-39.

Al Horford, who has been on fire in Game 1, poured 9 points of his 19-point outing in the third quarter, sparking a Celtics rally to trim the deficit into ten at 76-66.

Boston tried to salvage their playoff lives in the fourth quarter with Jaylen Brown’s trey at 5:32 to settle them down eight, 86-78, before Wiggins answered back with a quick three-pointer, and the Warriors held on to finish the best-of-seven series in six games.

Brown carried the fight to the Warriors with 34 points while all-star Jayson Tatum ended his first finals appearance with another off night by scoring 13 points in 40 minutes.


Edited by Quian Vencel A. Galut