Warriors vs. Lakers: Stephen Curry can pick up and roll LA to death, but will Steve Kerr let him?

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By Webdesk



For all the commendable defenses Jarred Vanderbilt and the rest of the Lakers put up against Stephen Curry in Game 1, it could be argued that Warriors coach Steve Kerr was actually the one who limited Curry’s scoring impact the most.

Curry still finished with 27 points on six three-pointers. But it all came early and late, with a huge drought in between, as Curry made just one shot in a 26-minute span that spanned the entirety of the second and third quarters.

During that time, and actually for most of the game, Kerr used Curry in his standard off-ball role, running his random routes through mazes of screens in a state of perpetual motion. Curry is indeed one of the best, most instinctive off-ball movers we’ve ever seen, and the Warriors is designed around the gravity he creates and the vacuums of scoring space it offers everyone, not to mention Curry’s all -time catch and shoot ability.

The problem with this is that it can sometimes be difficult to get the ball to Curry if he doesn’t get free on the first few plays and the shot clock starts to dwindle. It’s easier to hold and knock Curry off the ball; umpires do not whistle as fast as they do on contact with the ball, if they see the contact at all.

Most of the time though, Curry lets run off the ball, despite all the success he and the Warriors have had at it, leaving him at the mercy of the system-generated space, even if he does receive it. If the ball and the player move, and the shields are set for Curry, don’t disengage him from his defender, or defendersthen he catches the ball in tight quarters without much opportunity to separate.

Take this play, for example.

Vanderbilt has been glued to Curry from the start. Curry coming in for a transfer is predictable based on this set (defense is hipper for the entire Golden State movement than in their heyday). Vanderbilt is a tall, physical, athletic defender who can and will fight across the top of fencing, closing what little initial space gained by Curry as he follows the play – as he does here, eventually leaving the 6- foot-3 Curry sandwiched between a 6-foot-8 Vanderbilt and a 6-foot-10 Anthony Davis with no room for recourse.

In general, this was Curry’s way during his Game 1 two-quarter goal drought. He occasionally jumped loose and missed a few shots that he normally takes, but it was a struggle to separate from the screens as the Lakers moved forward draped. him, ready to thwart the scouted routes and cut Curry’s path to the ball. As a result, Curry only touched the ball a total of 74 times in Game 1, according to NBA.com tracking, his lowest tally of the playoffs.

This is when, for all the success of this team and system, Warriors fans get frustrated with Kerr, when he stubbornly sticks to his fair offensive ethos – happy to let lesser players dictate the fate of even crucial assets rather than do what seems obvious: put the ball in Curry’s hands from the start, ruling out the possibility that he won’t break free from a screen and more or less sit out the possession.

From there, run high pick-and-roll and let his best player, who happens to be the most deadly pick-and-roll threat in NBA history, either boil his own buckets or assemble a double team that generates the type of 4-on-3 possessions the Warriors have enjoyed over the years.

Despite Curry’s ability to virtually guarantee a great shot as the creator of the ball, Kerr saves his “give the ball to Steph and let him do his thing” attack for emergencies. Game 7 against the Kings was an emergency. That day, the Warriors performed a total of 20 pick-and-rolls and isolations for Curry, by far the most in a single game of that series. He scored 50 points.

More importantly, the Warriors beat the Kings by 20 that game, their biggest winning margin of the series and more than double the margin of their Game 4 and 5 wins combined. On ball Curry was just too much.

Indeed, on-ball Curry was also too much for the Lakers in Game 1. The difference was that Kerr waited a little too long to let it go. According to Synergy tracking, Curry didn’t have any high pick-and-roll in the second and third quarters. At 9:38 in the fourth quarter, Curry finally did the most basic thing in basketball: he dribbled up, got past a Kevon Looney ball screen, and shot. This is what happened.

A few minutes later, Curry turned what Synergy registered as a high pick-and-roll, but really, after the screen came up with nothing, it became isolation—his first of the night, by the way. Anyway, the point is that Curry had the ball in his hands with a live dribble and room to work, and again here’s what happened (I encourage you to make sure you have your volume turned up so you Stan Van Gundy can be heard making the same point this entire article is devoted to making):

Minutes later, Curry knocked down a 3-pointer to tie the game recorded as a catch-and-shoot jumper, but the whole play was remade by Curry creating himself from the dribble on a spaced floor. First he tries to switch D’Angelo Russell over to him. He dances to Russell in the paint, and when he gives up the ball, watch Russell gesture to the ref to blow the whistle. In that split second when Russell loses his defensive focus, Curry moves behind the line and holds it.

This is so much different from a typical catch-and-shoot where Curry starts off the ball and the defender is willing to follow him across screens. When he starts of the ball, creates its own space and momentum, and Than passest, defenders’ natural instinct is to take their guard off. That’s all Curry needs to move to a shot.

Kerr isn’t wrong if he doesn’t want to rely on Curry to consistently create a dribbling attack himself. We’ve seen the postseason ceilings of this philosophy time and time again. Trae Young with the Hawks. Luka Doncic with the Mavericks. James Harden with the missiles. Damian Lillard with the Blazers.

When playoff defenses see certain plays over and over, they tend to end up hanging on to them like a virus. This is not to say anything about the energy loss of the man who is in charge of both starting and ending possessions throughout the game. A balance must be found.

For Kerr and the Warriors, it’s about finding the right time to leave the system, put the ball in Curry’s hands and let it go. Do it too early, and the Lakers adapt and/or Curry gets tired. Do it too late, like they did in Game 1, and you lose. Kerr waited until the final game of the series against Sacramento to pull the Curry card, and he got away with it. They came on the sheet from that series.

This is a different series. The Lakers are a much more physical off-ball defense. Giving him a live dribble and either choice or space to create is the surest way to maximize his impact. Getting Davis out of the picture is a top Warriors priority, and Curry running pick-and-roll with Davis’ man is the best way to do that, too.

Kerr knows all this. So it’s not a question if he’ll put the ball in Curry’s hands and make it work. The question is, when he finally does, will it be too late?





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