Warriors' Playoff Win Overshadowed by Giants' Eleventh Inning Avalanche
The Golden State Warriors reached the second round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs, where they lost 4-1 to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Their lone win in the series (Game 1 in Minneapolis) was overshadowed by (1) Stephen Curry's hamstring injury and by (2) what their neighboring baseball team (San Francisco Giants) did during halftime of the game approximately 400 miles away in Chicago. Despite the fact that the halftime lasted a whole fifteen minutes, the Giants batted continuously in the 11th inning during that time. (The Warriors' halftime was from 7:42 to 7:57 pm and the Giants' 11th inning went from 7:39 to 8:01 pm.)
In the baseball game, the Giants scored nine runs in the 11th inning against the Chicago Cubs to win 14-5. It was only the second time since I was born that an MLB team won an extra-inning game by at least nine runs. (The other time was when the Los Angeles Angels beat the Baltimore Orioles 17-8 in a thirteen-inning game in 2009.) The nine runs was the most runs in an extra inning in Giants' franchise history. The previous record was eight runs. This was achieved two different times when they were the New York Giants: in 1929 against the Pittsburgh Pirates and in 1940 against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The great offensive play did not carry over for long. Eleven days after the Cubs game, the Giants started a string of sixteen consecutive games (May 17 - June 3) in which they scored less than half the number of runs they scored in that one magical inning (four runs or less). It was their longest such string since they scored at most four runs in nineteen consecutive games in 1965 from May 30 to June 20.