How Warriors’ Stephen Curry-Kevin Durant dynamic worked this season

CLEVELAND — The Warriors’ humble superstar offered a window into how he views another star teammate sharing the same ball. Stephen Curry’s perspective also captured partly why Kevin Durant found the Golden State Warriors so endearing when he weighed his options as a free agent two years ago.

“We want to see each other succeed,” Curry said. “We got a good chemistry going.”

The Warriors’ often-misunderstood superstar provided a glimpse into how he views a teammate whose gravity and charisma often commands center stage. Instead of Durant viewing Curry’s shooting presence coming at the expense of his own, however, Durant has looked at how both threats can complement each other.

“We’ve figured out a good balance,” Durant said. “I think being able to play off each other definitely helps. Not just us, but definitely everybody else on the court. We play off each other well.”

Their ability to play off each other largely explains why Durant’s transition to Golden State last season became mostly seamless en route to his first Finals MVP and first NBA championship. It also partly explains why the Warriors have a 2-0 NBA Finals series lead against the Cleveland Cavaliers entering Game 3 on Wednesday.

“There’s just a sense that we’re all on the same team,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “Nobody cares about whose team it is and all that stuff. Our guys just play. There have been games KD has had to take over. There have been games where Steph takes over and lots of games in between.”

Even if Curry and Durant have not fought over shots or touches, however, the sequel to their partnership has not gone as seamless as the original.

According to NBA.com’s tracking data, Durant has taken more shots out of isolation during the postseason (26.2 percent) and the 2017-18 regular season (15.5 percent) than what he showed in the 2017 NBA playoffs (10.6 percent) and 2016-17 regular season (11.5 percent). Subsequently, Curry has taken 12.2 percent of his shots in isolation in the postseason after having lower numbers in the 2017-18 regular season (6.9 percent), 2016-17 regular season (7.4 percent) and 2017 playoffs (10.6 percent).

Yet, Durant attributed the increase in isolation plays more to Houston’s switchheavy defense in the Western Conference finals than any selfish motives emerging.

“You have a lot of opportunities because of the switching defense. That’s the reason why things may look a little bit bigger than what they really are as far as the iso stuff is concerned,” Durant said. “I think we did a good job in navigating through it all and still playing our game. Just showing we can adapt to different situations.”

Through those different situations in the playoffs, Durant passed to Curry 19.5 percent of the time and Warriors forward Draymond Green nearly 30 percent of the time. Curry passed a 34.2 plurality to Green and 24.4 percent of the time to Green. With Green often assuming playmaking responsibilities, he distributed the ball almost evenly to Curry (25.9 percent) and Durant (25.3 percent).