SCOREBOARD WATCHING
Curry’s Warriors dominate the NBA with lights-out offence that looks mighty familiar to Raptors coach Casey — from his Sonics days.
Read Doug Smith’s report on last night’s Raptors-Warriors game at thestar.com
OAKLAND— The Golden State Warriors would seem to be this gamechanging group of gifted NBA players, a small-ball whirlwind that forces teams to try to match them shot for shot, three-pointer for threepointer, in a futile attempt to keep up.
But they really didn’t invent the genre. They’re just close to perfecting a style that Raptors coach Dwane Casey has seen for decades.
There may not have been a collection of talent like Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green in the past, but the style? The style’s been around.
“We did that, too,” Casey said, recalling his time as an assistant to George Karl with the Seattle SuperSonics in the early 1990s. “We had Detlef Schrempf at the five. We played him a lot there and we played small a lot in Seattle, too, with Shawn Kemp playing the five.
“It’s nothing new, I promise you, and we were pretty effective with it. The only difference is, now you have all kinds of tracking systems and numbers that quantify it and keep measurements on it, more so than the coach’s naked eye. It’s the same concept.”
The Warriors have, over the years, been a franchise that’s tried to do away with tradition, play a unique style and be concerned only with how it accomplishes it. Don Nelson, when he was Golden State’s head coach, used to tilt at windmills all the time — playing four guards and sometimes five, trying to turn the game upside down.
“Nelly kind of started it, but I don’t know if Nelly did it with as much three-point shooting as they are now,” Casey said. “But he started it with the smaller lineups, the small fives, or even the five-man out shooting the three-point shot with (sevenfoot-seven) Manute Bol.
“Everyone gets excited about this is the new (way), but anything happening in the NBA has happened before. Just look at the history of league. There is nothing you haven’t seen that we are seeing now.”
It’s just that this group does it so extraordinarily well with a roster stacked with presumptive hall of famers.
Curry and Thompson might be the best distance-shooting backcourt in the history of the game, Durant is always in the discussion of the league’s most valuable player and Green is an outlier — a big man with rebounding, shooting, passing and ball-handling skills who is a nightly matchup nightmare.
They get on these runs in games and it can be dizzying, with shots raining down from every conceivable angle and a free-flowing offence that’s pretty to watch.
“Man, it could be a one-point game, you walk in the kitchen, get something to drink, come back, they can be up 14 that quick,” Raptor DeMar DeRozan said. “That’s the type of team it is . . . they’re the champions for a reason.”
And that’s why it’s folly for teams to try to mimic the Warriors, who hosted the Raptors at Oracle Arena on Wednesday night. Even though Golden State only carried a 2-2 record into the game — for them, it’s almost a slump — they are always to be feared.
Curry, for instance, was only shooting 36.6 per cent from three-point range through his first four games, but he’s averaging 29 points an outing.
“Physically, emotionally, this is probably as good as he’s ever going to be,” Golden State head coach Steve Kerr said of Curry earlier this week. “I think he’s better now than he was last year or the year before, and that’s saying something.”
It leaves the Warriors not to be trifled with — or matched.
“You are not going to out-Golden State, Golden State,” Casey said. “I think everyone in this league is making a mistake trying to be like Golden State, because there is only one Golden State with four of the best shooters in the world.”