Curry, Durant just clicked — no icebreaking required
The Heat needed to warm up to each other, but these Fab Four connected from the start
When Kevin Durant decided Golden State was where he wanted to be, there was a palpable shiver up and down the NBA ranks.
An already stellar team, a team coming off a record 73-win season was adding another topfive NBA talent to its roster. The prospect of how good the Golden State Warriors could be was, quite frankly, terrifying.
Some chose to play down those fears, assuming an adjustment period would be necessary, and even then it was not a slam dunk that the chemistry would come together. Just like it took the better part of a full season for the big three to figure it out with the Miami Heat, so too would the Warriors need time to adjust to Durant joining an elite squad that already boasted Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
That period never really came, with the Warriors piling up wins.
There’s no question that through these playoffs the Warriors’ big four are as scary efficient and productive as we all first feared back on July 7, 2016 when Durant signed on.
Through the first two games of these NBA Finals, both Durant and Curry have had their share of the spotlight. Ask their head coach, however, and he’ll say notoriety or acclaim are not that important to either.
“They’re just both very naturally unselfish and relatively quiet,” Steve Kerr said of his top two scorers in these playoffs. “Neither one craves the spotlight, but neither one shies away from it either.
“I think they have become really good friends. They really enjoy playing together. They understand the power that they possess together, and I think that that’s an important dynamic. It’s not about one or the other, it’s about both of them, and they can put a lot of pressure on people.”
Curry takes it one step further, adding Thompson and Green into the mix in describing how this collection of talent has developed to the point that they look almost unguardable.
“There’s a lot of things, just obviously getting more comfortable with each other as time goes on, but just simplifying things, really,” Curry said. “Understanding that not just me and K.D., but Klay, Draymond, we all can just be ourselves and just play our game and not have to overthink or overcomplicate anything, really. We all bring a little something different to the table and the pieces of that puzzle fit really well.
“And so when we’re all locked in and focused and playing aggressive, knowing that whoever has the ball will make a play, just try to keep it simple — something good’s going to happen,” Curry said. “You’re going to either make a play yourself or for somebody else.”
The turning point — and we call it a turning point knowing full well the Warriors were 27-5 at that stage in the season — may have come Christmas Day against the Cleveland Cavaliers in a 109-108 loss.
“That was just a good lesson to learn in a hostile environment here that the stat sheet might look differently from night to night, but at the end of the day, we all have a role on this team,” Curry said. “We all have an opportunity to help us win, and we all can really play at an extremely high level at the same time and do great things.”
Kerr said the nature of both Curry’s and Durant’s games really does make the whole can-they-play-and-prosper-together argument moot from his standpoint.
“What we knew when we signed K.D. was that the fit would be pretty smooth,” Kerr said. “It’s not like you’re trying to put two dominant ball-handlers together who can’t shoot. That’s a much more difficult proposition.
“The example I would probably give you would be like Miami with (Dwyane) Wade and LeBron (James). I think that was a much tougher transition because you’re talking about two guys who generally in their careers to that point had been kind of point forward types — neither one was really a three-point shooter at the time. So they had, it took them a good year, I thought, to figure out how to play together, and then they did it beautifully.
“But with Steph and K.D., you’re talking about guys who handle the ball, who shoot from range, who cut, who are kind of used to playing off the ball, so that the transition I think was pretty smooth,” Kerr said. “It did take a little bit of time, but for the most part their talents fit together pretty naturally.”
Right now the Cavaliers are trying their damnedest to figure out how to stop either one. Through two games in the finals, Durant is averaging 35.5 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists. Curry is right there with him averaging 30 points, eight rebounds and 10.5 assists.
Slowing down this duo is Cleveland’s problem alone right now, but the rest of the league has to be taking notes too, that palpable shiver greater than ever.