Warriors playing Nellie small ball, but it doesn’t mean they’re small

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Steinmetz

The man who’s so big he’s got three names, Ethan Sherwood Strauss, wrote a real nice piece on the Warriors and the evolution of their defense. Here is it: http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12273986/how-golden-state-warriors-built-nba-best-defense

In Part 1 of an 11-part breakdown detailing the team’s improved defense, there’s a quote from assistant GM Travis Schlenk. In essence, Schlenk said one of the big things the Warriors value most and look for in a player is length.

That would make sense. Schlenk’s worked under some guys — Pat Riley, Don Nelson, Chris Mullin — who value it in a big way.

What’s interesting about the current Golden State Warriors is that they’ve got some similarities to the “We Believe” Warriors of 2007, and Schlenk was along for that ride beside Nelson on the bench. And, yes, we’re talking small ball here.

The reality is the Warriors are playing plenty of small ball these days, it’s just a touch more camouflaged than it ever was under Nelson and it’s described as something else. What’s amusing about small ball is that many believe it means going to a small lineup. That’s not entirely true. To me, it mostly means going without a traditional center.

In fact, one of the biggest misperceptions about the “We Believe” team was that it was a small team. No, it wasn’t. It was a team, though, that often played without a center. But if you go position by position, and look at their personnel that year, you’ll realize that it was actually a pretty big and long team.

At point guard was Baron Davis, who at his best was a dynamic two-way point guard. He was big, strong and physical and yet he would oftentimes be the quickest player on the floor. He used his size to bother opposing point guards on the defensive end, sometimes smothering his opposite number while all his teammates overplayed and prepared to pounce. And as for the offensive end, well, Davis was someone the Warriors frequently went to in the low post. Why? Because he had a size advantage most of the time. In other words, he was big.

On the perimeter for that team were players such as Jason Richardson, Mickael Pietrus, Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes. Each and every one of those players had good size for their positions. Richardson was 6-feet-6 and strong and Pietrus wasn’t quite as big, but he was wiry and definitely long. Stephen Jackson was an awfully big three when he played the small forward, and when he had to play power forward, his reach and wingspan served him — and Golden State — extraordinarily well.

Jackson’s size, length and quickness solved the Dirk Nowitzki riddle in that first-round playoff series, going a long way toward that monumental  upset. Even Andris Biedrins, at that time still effective and contributing, was a long and lanky player with terrific reach. When Biedrins was playing well, he could rebound outside his area and was a terrific help defender.

True, when the Warriors went all the way “small,” they often took out Biedrins and had Al Harrington at center. So, yes, the Warriors lived with being undersized there, but Nelson always figured he’d take his chances with that against a limited offensive center — which is most of the league.

The bottom line is that through the years I’ve heard Nelson, Mullin and Schlenk all talk about that “We Believe” team and the one thing they all agreed on was that few appreciated how “big” that team actually was. And that’s been a theme and focus ever since.

Which brings us to this year’s Warriors. We all know that because Andrew Bogut is not reliable, the Warriors are going to have to figure out what to do at that position. Mo Speights is obviously going to get some of those minutes, but if you’ve noticed, we’re starting to see David Lee playing some center. David Lee at center is code for small ball.

But again, look at the Warriors by position. Curry ain’t exactly a beast, but he’s grown into his body and he’s 6-3 with a solid frame. Klay Thompson has great length at the two-guard, and that length — along with his quickness and instincts — allows him to guard three positions.

Andre Iguodala is long, Harrison Barnes is pretty long and Draymond Green has a freakish wingspan. Green, for example, is considered a tweener and undersized and he might be both. But make no mistake: When he’s defending a three, he’s got a big-time size advantage most of the time and when he guards power forwards his strength and length make him tough to score on.

So, let’s just say you’re the Warriors and you’ve got a lineup of Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Green and Lee. Well, you know what, that’s small ball — because you’re playing without a center and you’ve got multiple players capable of handling the ball. But are the Warriors really small?

Not on the perimeter, they’re not, which is exactly the way the “We Believe” team was.

 

 

 

 

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Another imprint game by Bogut

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Steinmetz

If you want a peek at how important Andrew Bogut is to the Warriors, take a look back at the first quarter of Tuesday night’s game against the Sacramento Kings — A game that wound up a very casual 121-96 win for the Warriors.

When you see a margin of victory that large, the inclination is to think there was no key element, no critical  juncture, no overly meaningful stretch that determined the outcome. And sometimes that’s true. But not on this night.

Hard to believe/remember, but this game started out with the Kings taking a 20-10 lead. Ben McLemore was scoring and the Kings looked awfully confident and comfortable. As you would figure, the Warriors would ease themselves back into the game, and then some, and it was Bogut who was most responsible.

Curry would rack up the points on the offensive end, but it was Bogut who fueled it all.

Here’s a snippet of some — emphasis: some — of what Bogut did in the first 12.

Bogut blocked a Rudy Gay dunk three-plus minutes into the game, with the Warriors already down 9-4, which got a fastbreak going; he stopped a dunk when he took a hard, no-highlight foul on McLemore midway through; he stood tall and forced a DeMarcus Cousins miss with 2:10 left in the first quarter, which led to two Curry free throws at the other end; he did just enough to intimidate Quincy Miller on the next possession and caused him to miss a peeper and the Warriors scored at the other end; with 48 seconds left in the period, he blocked Jason Thompson at the rim and it was a score the other way.

By the end of the period, the Warriors were up 29-22, stability had been restored and they played from ahead for yet another game.  Besides all that documented stuff above, Bogut was the man primarily responsible for Cousins’ 1-for-6, three-turnover first quarter.

If you want to look past the first quarter, the theme still continues. When Bogut went out with four fouls in the third, Cousins began to do some damage. But still, this game was about the first quarter and the tone Bogut helps his team set.

Rim protection for the Warriors is huge because one of the keys to their defense is an ability for several wing defenders — Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green, Harrison Barnes, Justin Holiday — to switch everything on the perimeter. But the Warriors don’t just like to switch, they like to pressure out there, too, trying to take advantage of their length.

That sometimes leaves them vulnerable to penetration. But Bogut has done an incredible job this year of turning that vulnerability into a strength. And I say strength for a reason: Because often those defensive plays by Bogut at the rim lead to transition, and that’s the absolute strength of this team: to play uptempo and in the open court.

What Bogut does, essentially, is turn a disadvantageous situation — one in which the opposing team appears to be poised for an easy score at the rim — into exactly the thing the Warriors are fantastic at: running a fastbreak. The win over the Kings was just another game that solidifies the notion that the Warriors might be able to win some games, maybe a series without Bogut in the postseason, but they likely aren’t going to win the whole thing.

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Crunch-time concern for Warriors?

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Steinmetz

If the Golden State Warriors have an exploitable weakness, it certainly hasn’t been discovered yet. The Warriors are 37-8 and have been rolling along since Day 1 this season. Their offense is considered among the most beautiful in the NBA, and their defense, as many of their supporters constantly point out, is also elite.

So the questions are: Are there any red flags to be seen? Any possible obstacles to overcome once the postseason rolls around? What’s something to look for that could possibly bite this team in the playoffs?

Admittedly, there’s not a lot to pick on here. But if there’s one thing I’m anxious to see about come playoff time it’s the Warriors’ offense down the stretch of close games. As any Warrior fan knows this year, their team hasn’t been involved in a lot of tight ones. Golden State has had just three games this year decided by four points or less.

If there’s one concern I’d have as a fan in the playoffs, it’s how will the Warriors’ offense look in the last three to five minutes of a game? The reason I ask this is because the Warriors don’t really have a pecking order on offense or a place they’re comfortable going when things get dicey.

The Warriors’ passing game or motion offense or open offense or whatever you want to call it thrives on ball movement and player movement. While the Warriors certainly have “plays,” they also don’t have a big guy to simply dump it into the low post. What can sometimes happen when you run this kind of offense is that the ball will not end up in the hands of the player you want it to be in when the game is on the line.

We saw this when the Warriors lost to the Chicago Bulls — a game in which the offensively limited Andre Iguodala had the ball at two critical junctures. When you’re sitting with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson and even a scorer like David Lee, I’m not sure that’s what the Warriors want down the stretch.

The obvious answer is get the ball to Curry and let him make a play. But Curry plays point guard, and because of that, defenses can often get the ball out of his hands by double-teaming or blitzing him hard out front. That means someone else may have to make a play.

That someone else may likely have to be Thompson, perhaps the team’s best post-up player. While Thompson has improved his game in a variety of ways, I’d rather see him post up (like he did last year against Indiana for a game-winner). In other words, as great as the Warriors’ offense is, it’s possible they may have to go away from certain aspects of it down the stretch. Yes, they may have to go to more isolation, which former coach Mark Jackson got criticized for.

Is this reaching? Perhaps. But it’s true that games slow up in the postseason, particularly the deeper you get into the playoffs. And when the game does slow up, it might just be a little tougher for Golden State to find the guy they want to make the play.

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