With NBA offenses tougher to stop, Warriors put in the work to get it done.
In the up-and-down intensity of Game 5, with his team trying to win a
championship against the most efficient offense in postseason history, Golden
State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr looked out on the floor and marveled at
what he was watching.
“The game has changed so much in terms of the spacing and the shooting,” Kerr
said afterward, “and you’re looking out there and you’re like, how are we going
to stop anybody?”
The skill level of NBA players is the best it’s ever been. The combination of
rules changes and increased spacing has enhanced the talent like never before.
Power forwards and centers shoot 3-pointers. The Finals featured a matchup of
Kevin Durant and LeBron James, maybe the two most unique combinations of size
and skill the league has ever seen. Late in the first quarter of Game 5, the
Cleveland Cavaliers used a lineup where 6-7 Kyle Korver was the biggest player.
With improved skill, better spacing, rules that favor offense and increased
emphasis on more efficient shots, the NBA has evolved over the last several
years to the point where league-wide efficiency reached 106.2 points per 100
possessions in the 2016-17 regular season, the highest mark since the league
started charting turnovers in 1977-78.
For the fourth time in the last five seasons, a team set a new record for the
highest effective field goal percentage in NBA history. For the second straight
year, it was the Warriors, a team with enough talent to win more than 50 games
on offense alone. If the Warriors had just an average defense, they still would
have had the league’s second best point differential per 100 possessions
(plus-7.0).
But they didn’t. This team was built on a defensive foundation under former head
coach Mark Jackson, and that foundation hasn’t cracked one bit. After ranking
third defensively in Jackson’s final season, the Warriors have ranked first,
fourth and second in their three campaigns under Kerr.
With the increasing emphasis on the 3-point shot, the Warriors are one of only
three teams that have ranked in the top 10 in opponent 3-point percentage – a
stat that can be subject to randomness – each of the last four years. The
Warriors and the Boston Celtics are the only two teams that have ranked in the
top five each of the last four years.
“Everyone is getting better at shooting 3s,” Warriors assistant coach Ron Adams
said during The Finals. “That means that we, as the Golden State Warriors, have
to get better at defending them, without fouling, because that can be a dicey
proposition now, too. You try to drill techniques and encourage your guys in
certain ways, fundamentally, that they can keep pace and be effective in that
regard.”
Protecting the basket still has to be priority No. 1. On a points per attempt
basis, layups (shot at a 60-percent success rate) are still more valuable than
3s (at 35 percent). But every year, defending shots from the perimeter becomes
more important. And it requires a combination of team principles, individual
fundamentals and effort.
“It’s not to say that we do everything right,” assistant Jarron Collins added.
“But I think that if you look at our shot challenges, there’s a reason why teams
shoot such a low percentage against us from the 3-point line. It’s the athletes
that we have, it’s the technique that they’re using, and it’s the emphasis that
we put on defending the 3-point line by challenging shots.”
It’s one thing to run a shell drill or something similar, where players practice
defensive rotations. It’s another to run a shell drill with emphasis on the
proper way to challenge a shot. Collins says that no team that he’s been
involved with has stressed defensive technique and fundamentals like these
Warriors.
It shows in the results. League-wide efficiency was even higher in the playoffs
(108.5 points scored per 100 possessions) than it was in the regular season. But
in the first round, the Warriors held the Portland Trail Blazers to just 96.3
points per 100 possessions, 11.5 fewer than the Blazers scored in the regular
season. In the conference semifinals, they held the Utah Jazz to 97.6, 9.8 fewer
than the Jazz scored in the regular season. Of the 15 series in this postseason,
those were the two best defensive performances relative to how good the opponent
was offensively in the regular season.
Offensive efficiency increased with each round in this postseason and The Finals
was the fourth most efficient playoff series of the last 21 years (315 series
total), with the Warriors and Cavs combining to score 114.6 points per 100
possessions over the five games. Cleveland scored a postseason-high 136 points
per 100 possessions in Game 4 and shot better than 50 percent (both from 2-point
range and 3-point range) over Games 4 and 5. The finale was an incredible
offensive display.
But it was the Warriors’ defense that earned them a 2-0 lead that Cleveland
never overcame. After the Cavs scored an incredible 121 points per 100
possessions through the first three rounds, Golden State shackled them with
their two worst offensive games of the postseason. Game 3 was their fourth-worst
offensive game of the 18 they played in these playoffs and Game 5 was ultimately
determined by a 21-2 Golden State run in which the Cavs scored just once in a
stretch of 11 possessions in the second quarter.
For the series, even though they broke out in Games 4 and 5, the Cavs shot 38
percent from 3-point range, a mark above the league average, but also below the
43 percent they shot through the first three rounds. And the lack of volume may
have been just as critical. They took just 29 3s in Game 2 and 24 in Game 5,
dropping them to 10-13 for the season when they attempted fewer than 30.
With multiple defenders who can switch onto and stay in front of the Cavs’ best
players, the Warriors were, for the most part, able to stay close to home on
Cleveland’s shooters. After attempting 12.9 3s per 36 minutes through the first
three rounds, Kevin Love attempted only 6.9 per 36 in The Finals. Kyle Korver’s
drop-off (from 8.3 to 5.9) wasn’t as big, but still important given how good a
shooter he is.
The Warriors had some issues when the Cavs put their traditional bigs in
pick-and-rolls, but the rest of their roster switched comfortably and, except
for Game 4, did so without much miscommunication. The Cavs were able to take
advantage sometimes, but not enough.
In fact, on the Cavs’ first possession of the series, they got Klay Thompson
switched onto Love in the post. But Thompson got into Love’s jersey and forced
an ugly miss from the left wing.
“Klay did a fantastic job,” Collins said, “and that’s something for every high
school player to watch, his footwork on that, his taking up the space. Kevin is
stronger than him, but Klay has a really good base and does a really good job of
taking up space.”
Thompson is just one of several Golden State defenders with the required length,
athleticism and intelligence to be a high-level defender in today’s NBA. The
versatility of the Warriors’ roster is critical and so is the collective I.Q.
“You’re making decisions as much defensively as you are offensively,” Warriors
GM Bob Myers told NBA.com last year. “The ideal thing is to have five guys out
on the floor where you trust their decision-making on both sides of the ball.”
Draymond Green – the Defensive Player of the Year runner-up each of the last two
seasons and a finalist this year – is the anchor: Smart, versatile and with an
internal fire that always stays lit. In the playoffs, the Warriors allowed 98.6
points per 100 possessions with Green on the floor compared to 114.3 with him on
the bench.
“Draymond, to me, is the key to our defense,” Steve Kerr told NBA.com in his
first season with the Warriors. “He’s the key figure, because as the power
forward, he’s frequently involved in screen-and-rolls. And because he’s quick
enough and active enough to switch out onto a point guard, we’re able to stifle
a lot of the first options out of the opponent’s attacks. And when that happens
and the shot clock starts to wind down, we’re able to stay in front of people
and force a tough shot.”
“He probably should have been the Defensive Player of the Year two years ago,”
Collins said last week, “and he probably should be the Defensive Player of the
Year this year. He’s always in the conversation. When you have someone like that
who’s quarterbacking on the defensive end and brings that kind of intensity,
guys have to fall in line, because he demands it.”
It’s not clear that anyone was demanding it from the Cavs for most of the
season. They blamed injuries for their post-All-Star malaise, but their poor
defense was more about the players who were playing than those that were missing
(Love for a month, J.R. Smith for almost three). They had bad habits (in regard
to transition defense) and bad communication, both of which were exposed in The
Finals.
Maybe the Warriors were unstoppable, but when the Cavs won the championship last
year, they had ranked 10th in defensive efficiency in the regular season. In the
two years they lost to Golden State, they ranked 20th and 22nd.
“Any really good coach in this league understands that you’re not going to win
much without a really solid defense,” Adams said. “I think that will never
change. The challenge is keeping up with the offensive game and trying to come
to grips with the schemes that are needed, the fundamentals that are needed, and
the emphasis on the fundamentals that you’re practicing.”
Playing high-level defense has never been more difficult, but the Warriors put
in the work. Their success on that end of the floor should be acknowledged as
much as their offensive firepower and after a historically good offensive season
and a Finals matchup of two historically good offenses, the idea that defense
wins championships still rings true.
John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here and follow
him on Twitter.
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