GOLDEN STATE’S DEFENSIVE PLAY LOSING ITS SHINE
Warriors are surrendering more points, giving new hope to NBA champs’ rivals
Talk to Toronto Raptors coach Dwane Casey about the prospect of taking on the Golden State Warriors and he sounds like a man looking to win a battle of attrition.
And given the star-studded roster his team faced Wednesday night, he wasn’t wrong.
Many have tried to emulate the successful style of run and gun basketball these owners of two of the past three championships play, but all come up short.
The reason? No one has the quality of shooters Steve Kerr has at his disposal as Warriors coach.
So Casey’s approach — and really the only approach to take against a team that boasts Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — is to outlast them.
As good as the Warriors have been, there has been the slightest slippage defensively this season.
Now, it’s just four games, but after finishing the year with the second-best defensive rating in the NBA a year ago, through four games Golden State sits 21st in defensive efficiency.
A year ago, they allowed teams 101.1 points per 100 possessions. That number has spiked to 106.7.
Again, small sample size, but something an opponent can try to take advantage of. The problem with that approach? Too often teams get caught up in what the Warriors are doing to them at the other end. When this team gets in a rhythm, they are tough to stop and runs can get out of hand quickly.
Casey pointed to the game here last year when the Raptors got down by 20 midway through the first quarter. Rather than call it a night, however, the Raptors hung in and got that deficit down to two buckets by halftime.
The result was yet another loss but the lesson was learned.
“You have to have a constitution that says, ‘I’m not gonna quit, I’m not gonna give up. I’m going to keep competing against this team,’ because they are a team of runs,” Casey said.
“You have to withstand their runs and make your own runs offensively and defensively. You have to be mentally prepared for them. They are going to make shots. You are not going to prevent Golden State from making shots. What you can’t let it do is let those runs drain you emotionally and physically.
“And they do it against the best in the league,” he continued. “You have to turn around and get attempts. You can’t turn the ball over. You have to get shot attempts against this team. You have to be mentally tough enough to say, ‘Yeah, you scored on me, now be tough enough to play me on defence.’ If you don’t have that mentality that is when they get you down and keep you down and start pouring it on you if you give in to their three-point barrage.”
Casey’s Raptors teams have beaten the Warriors only twice in 11 tries over the past six years and never at Oracle Arena, one of the toughest venues to win at in the NBA.
For whatever reason, Curry seems to save his best basketball for the Raptors. In 14 games, he has averaged 30.2 points per game.
At shootaround Wednesday morning, DeMar DeRozan wondered aloud if that was because Curry’s father Dell played there during some of Steph’s formative years.
DeRozan, who sat out practice Tuesday with a bruised left thigh, played against the Warriors. Despite the lack of success his team has had against Golden State and at Oracle Arena, he was feeling pretty good about the way the Raptors were progressing.
“Even with the amount of mistakes we made versus San Antonio, we lost to one of the best teams in the league by four points,” DeRozan said. “We had a lot of struggles offensively, we couldn’t rebound the ball and we still had a chance to win the game. It says a lot. (The Warriors) will be another great test for us. Once we find that balance offensively and get a rhythm, I’ve got a lot of confidence in us.”