Trendsetter Warriors have made a monster
All sorts of reasons have been given for the Warriors’ somewhat slow start, although it wasn’t that many years ago people would have been tickled for them to be 5-3. Man, are fans spoiled these days or what?
But you’ve heard the reasons. Championship hangover. Too early start to the season. The after-effects of a preseason trip to China. General first-month malaise. The inability to fill the giant voids left by Ian Clark and James Michael McAdoo.
OK, just kidding on that last one (and no, we’re not disparaging those guys, they had their moments). But with all the dissection of the Warriors’ early turnover, rebounding and defensive issues, a couple of important developments have been overlooked.
First, the NBA is fast becoming a Warriors-style league pretty much from top to bottom. Second, the Warriors themselves may be just a tad slow adjusting to the revolution they inspired.
There are a few holdouts to Warriorball. The Clippers, God bless ’em. With DeAndre Jordan
and Blake Griffin, they still cling to a bit of that back-to-the-basket, defend-the-rim motif and mentality. Memphis, of course, as long as Marc Gasol is there. Maybe not the twin-tower New Orleans Pelicans, either, although DeMarcus Cousins may be campaigning for a spot in the All-Star 3-point contest this year.
Everybody else? They’re now looking a whole lot like mirror images of the Warriors, obviously not in the level of talent but definitely in the style of play. Ball movement. Quick tempo. High screen pick-and-rolls. Drive-and-kick. Back cuts. Smaller lineups. Running people off the 3-point line defensively with those smaller lineups.
And last but not least, lots and lots and lots of 3-point shots. In the early going of this NBA season, there are 25 teams averaging more than 25 3-point attempts per game. Eleven of those are averaging over 30 attempts, and one (Houston, of course), is hoisting up nearly 44 shots from beyond the arc per game. Nuts.
It’s also dramatic. In 2014-15, Steve Kerr’s first season at the Warriors’ helm, only 10 teams averaged more than 25 3-point attempts a game and only one barely more than 30 (the Rockets, again). Teams that didn’t use to shoot them much are casting without conscience or hesitation now. The Warriors completely had their hands fill with the Washington Wizards last week, who’ve nearly doubled their number of 3-point shots in the last three seasons. Otto Porter, good night, where’d he come from?
Then there’s Detroit, one of the last great strongholds of half-court brontosaurus basketball. Bob Lanier. The Bill Laimbeer-Rick Mahorn Bad Boys. The Pistons of Ben Wallace, Antonio McDyess and Chauncey
Billups, grinding out those 86-79 sausage Ws. Even more recently, with Andre Drummond, Greg Monroe and Josh Smith, Detroit played old-school, in-the-paint slowball.
Not anymore. Drummond’s still a Piston, but he’s trimmed down and now serving as the spoke in a more fast-paced, volume-shooting style that must have the people of Detroit asking, “What in Joe Louis is this?” Kerr saw it coming even before Stan Van Gundy’s new crew sprinted into Oracle Arena last week, shot a whole bunch of 3s (making 12 of 27 to the Warriors’ 10 of 27), and sprinted out with an upset victory.
“They’re playing a lot differently this year,” Kerr said before that game. “They’re running a lot more perimeter movement stuff, Princeton action, dribble handoffs with Drummond. They’ve got a lot of interchangeable parts, and they’re tough defensively.”
Translation: They’re playing like us.
You’re going to be hearing that a lot from Kerr this year about teams playing “differently.” Check out the revamped version of Oklahoma City, where Paul George and Carmelo Anthony both have more 3-point attempts than Russell Westbrook.
Toronto has significantly upped its 3-ball game. Take a look at many of the up-and-coming teams with nothing to lose. Orlando. Brooklyn. Philly. Dallas. Chicago. The Knicks. They’re all driving some version of the shiny, successful Golden State model now.
The 3 is the key to it all, and the great equalizer many nights for teams that may lack the talent. If you don’t have the Warriors’ talent but you at least shoot a lot of 3s, you have a puncher’s chance against them if you’re hot and they’re not.
As late as two years ago, teams simply weren’t doing that. In their record 73-win season, the Warriors had 664 more 3-point attempts than their opponents and made 435 more. But last year, the advantages in attempts and makes against the league was nearly cut in half, but the Warriors still took 285 more 3s and made 245 more — roughly three more made 3s per game than the competition.
This year the Warriors have only taken 15 more 3-point shots than their opponents, and made just 12 more over eight games. Perhaps even more remarkable, the Warriors are 21st in the league in overall shots taken even though they lead the
league in scoring average at 121 points a game.
So what does it all mean? The Warriors are playing against their own style more often than not now, and in the early going, it’s clear they had some trouble with that. They waxed the bigger, slower teams like the Clippers and Pelicans, but had issues with the smaller, quicker teams. They’re getting a dose of their own medicine with other teams’ ball movement and 3-point shooting. They’ve committed more turnovers because quicker defenders are tightening up the passing lanes and guarding the perimeter.
Here’s the good news: The Warriors still have more talent than anybody. They’re deeper, more versatile and their core has been together longer. They still shoot the 3 with more efficiency most nights, and can score in so many more ways. Defensively, when they want to, they can get stops with the best clubs.
That said, the Warriors may need to make some alterations to hit that 6065 win mark again. In essence, they are going to have to learn how to better beat themselves, because that’s the NBA right now. It’s a run-andgun monster of their own making.