(CTN Information) – Regardless of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ stellar defensive effort – they held the Golden State Warriors to a 97.9 offensive score – I felt the Warriors shot themselves within the foot.
It’s all the time been an ideal factor for the Warriors to combine up their offense and provides their opponents completely different seems. The movement offense is their factor, however with among the finest pick-and-roll ballhandlers within the league in Steph Curry, they’ll swap issues up and throw opponents off.
Warriors are greater than prepared to arrange ballscreens for Curry if the scenario requires it – for example, if there’s a giant juicy goal for him to seek out. One among two issues should occur: both the protection offers up the simple swap, inflicting the mismatch, or they give you a technique to stop it.
Wolves protection did an ideal job with the latter method, however in addition they gave Warriors small alternatives. They gave the Warriors an opportunity to select aside the cracks and bust them extensive open.
Nevertheless, for some purpose – dangerous selections, dangerous course of, or fatigue settling – the Warriors simply settled an excessive amount of for my style. Wolves shut down Warriors offense by chucking pictures early within the shot clock, deciding on dangerous pictures, being indecisive, going too quick in conditions the place endurance was prudent.
In opposition to the Wolves, one possession stood out as an excellent illustration of what ailed their offense:
You most likely didn’t count on me to level out this one (I’ll get to the extra obvious ones later). You’ve obtained to listen to me out on this one.
Two ballscreens (“Dive Rolls”) are utilized by the Warriors to change Karl-Anthony Cities over to Curry. As normal, Curry takes this matchup all the way in which to the top, both by blowing by the defender and changing a layup, or by stepping again and taking pictures a three-point shot.
As an alternative of attacking Cities alone, Curry passes to Jordan Poole, who doesn’t do something in any respect in opposition to Taurean Prince. Through the possession, Curry tried to pressure Cities to chase him in a low-post break up motion.
Cities does an excellent job on Curry, however I believed Curry may’ve damaged Cities down extra. He passes to Draymond Inexperienced as a substitute of attempting to attain in opposition to the swap, and he takes a rushed shot with the clock winding down.
Let’s have a look at a number of the extra obvious examples.
There’s just one purpose the Warriors lose after they shoot themselves within the foot: turnovers.
To not sound like a damaged document, however the Warriors have misplaced a number of video games resulting from turnovers. It’s primarily as a result of they transfer the ball lots – they lead the league with 321.7 passes per sport (by a large margin over Indiana Pacers’ 304.1).
In opposition to the Wolves, they dedicated 16 turnovers, which led to 24 factors. This is able to take all day if I identified each single one, so let’s simply deal with the worst ones.
The Warriors had the possibility to attain on the break after an enormous defensive cease:
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