As the second round of the NBA playoffs surges into the weekend — with every series tied 1-1 for the first time in league history — all eyes are on the Golden State Warriors.
Klay Thompson’s Game 2 brilliance — 34 points on 8-for-9 shooting from 3-point range — evened up Golden State’s series with San Antonio heading into Friday night’s Game 3 at “the Roaracle,” but it has been Stephen Curry and Mark Jackson who have turned this organization into the NBA Finals contender it is today.
Yes, the Golden State Warriors are an NBA Finals contender today.
For the first time in decades, the Warriors are making a run at the NBA Finals, and it has never been more unexpected, thus becoming the media darlings. And not to mention, the Warriors run has been even more unexpected after David Lee was presumed out for the rest of the postseason after just the first playoff game.
Jackson and Curry were each part of featured articles by two of the premium NBA writers around on Friday, ESPN’s J.A. Adande and Grantland’s Zach Lowe.
Adande brought Jackson’s unique coaching style and forever-poised demeanor to light in an excellent piece on ESPN. In only his second year on the job, Jackson is coaching as if he is the coach of the year, not just a finalist. He’s making his mark by trusting his young and inexperienced team to battle straight up with the Spurs.
Just take note of the way Jackson has gone about it. He doesn’t call timeouts at the first hint of trouble. He doesn’t berate the officials. He doesn’t chastise the media members who continually pick against his team.
Jackson’s self-restraint allows the Warriors players to be unrestrained. The players’ personalities come through on the court, and their faces tell the story of what’s happening here: a team defying NBA convention and having a good time in the process.
Jackson’s old-school coaching methods — along with the big Monta Ellis/Andrew Bogut swap last season — have helped to change Golden State’s culture. But after Lee’s devastating injury, the seeds he has been planting for the last two years have helped his young ensemble of talent acclimate quickly to a rapid reinvention of their brand of basketball on the fly, in the playoffs, against two of the best teams in the league.
In fact, brand reinvention may be harder than brand invention.
Just ask J.C. Penney. Or MySpace. Or Spiderman. Or the Cleveland Browns.
Zach Lowe brilliantly explains how the Warriors have done this in the most extenuating of circumstances in his latest Grantland piece: “When the Warriors lost David Lee to what the team assumed was a season-ending injury in the team’s first playoff game, I was skeptical that Golden State would be able to reconstruct its offense on the fly against an opponent devoting nearly 100 percent of its scouting resources to the Warriors.”
Golden State would have to adapt in an instant, and they’d have to do so leaning on lineups that had barely played at all together in the regular season. It seemed too daunting a challenge in the face of very good competition and home-court disadvantage.
But the Warriors’ emergence as postseason darlings is more a reaffirmation of the adaptability of NBA-level talent, and especially an indication that Curry is the kind of transformational offensive force many of us suspected he would be if he could stay healthy.
While fascinating, Lowe’s piece is traditional Grantland length so you will have to catch the rest directly from him, but the point he makes cannot be overstated: the Warriors are dangerous. Very dangerous. And they continue to evolve each and every game behind the wizardy of Curry and guidance of Jackson.
If you’re going to evolve, you have to understand your weaknesses. Too many teams get caught trying to overcompensate instead of making the right tweaks. They can’t avoid stretching into a place where they’re just not very strong. That’s where the Knicks began to struggle against Boston and Indiana — notching up the iso’s for Carmelo and Earl Smith — and it’s why the Thunder began to struggle against the Rockets — overly reliant on Kevin Durant — and will struggle mightily against the Grizzlies.
The Warriors were able to avoid these common traps by simply giving Lee’s touches to Curry and recreating the offense around his ability to be an off-the-dribble force, trusting his youthful decision making at all times. They are putting him in more pick-and-roll situations with players that may not be as offensively talented as Lee, but can set better screens and create more space for Curry to do what he does best:
Let it fly.
Curry does not fire the ball without regards to his teammates, though. He’s averaging nine assists per game while shooting over 46 percent. He’s putting the Spurs in a difficult spot. If you play up on him, he’ll blow by you, either straight to the rim or deep enough to create a wide-open shot for one of his highly efficient teammates — Klay Thompson, Jarret Jack, Carl Landry, Andrew Bogut. But if you lay back to protect the paint, well, that’s a wide-open three for Curry.
Behind Jackson’s leadership and Curry’s superstar metamorphous, the Warriors continue to go.
Behind Jackson and Curry, they believe they will go all the way.
“I believe in my guys,” Jackson said. “And they’ve been through a whole lot.”
It’s hard not to start believing them, too.
Onto more news around the NBA