We've SWEPT the 3-1 jokes away, NOW WE SMELL LIKE CHAMPAGNE AGAIN(OFFICIAL WARRIORS 18-19 THREAD)

[CSquare43]

Shot out to @FcKuPaYmE

 

[Roland Coltrane]

Check out @anthonyVslater’s Tweet:

How is his shooting 35 foot fadeaway 3s linked to his turnovers

 

[dayun]

A lot salty fakkits in the series thread. Stay mad bytches.

 

[Roland Coltrane]

 

[G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman]

@NoHateLeftBehind

 

[Roland Coltrane]

@NoHateLeftBehind

Andrew Bogut’s value to the Warriors includes his knowledge of the game and willingness to share it

By Ethan Strauss 2h ago

8

If you watch the Warriors live during these playoffs, you might notice something unseen by the TV cameras: On the bench, Andrew Bogut is constantly talking and pointing things out to his teammates. Despite a three-season absence, he’s immediately picked up where he left off as a teacher. This is one aspect of basketball that matters, but in a hard to capture way. There is on-court impact and there is sideline impact. So far, Bogut is bringing both.

“Bogut is brilliant,” Steve Kerr said at Warriors practice Saturday. “He is a godsend.”

While Kerr was complimentary of the Aussie big man in the past, his recent praise of Bogut has reached James Lipton interview levels. Absence had made the heart grow fonder for both parties. The reunion has brought about renewed, mutual appreciation.

“Having two kids totally changed his life,” Kerr says. “He’s no longer a cynic. He’s just as smart and wise and fun. He’s always been a really good dude.”

Bogut says of having an infant and a toddler: “If you do lose or play bad, you get to go home to two kids who don’t give a shyt about it, so it’s a pretty cool thing. You can get home from whatever you’re doing and when you’ve got two kids and one of them shyts themselves, and you’ve got to change the diaper, you kind of forget about all the bad things you’re going through.”

Bogut isn’t just cherishing the silver lining in dirty diapers. Playing in a less glamorous league has offered him a new perspective on what it means to join the NBA champs.

“I think just having a better appreciation of the situation I’m in,” Bogut said. “I think when I was here last time, the pressure of the moment and just the stress of it, I probably didn’t appreciate and enjoy it as much as I should have. Whereas, just going back to Australia and playing in a league below the NBA, and seeing how much guys work just to be in that league and how much they enjoy it, I thought, if I get the opportunity again I’ll make sure I enjoy it.”

So far he’s enjoying it and contributing above and beyond the box score.

“He diagrammed this one play for us and we tried it,” Kerr said. “The play makes perfect sense, given the defense we’re facing.”

Bogut’s addition is an old “blast play,” one that has guards crisscrossing into the setting of pindown screens. It’s meant to crack the Clippers’ “top locking” approach.

“It hasn’t worked yet, unfortunately,” Bogut said, a bit sheepishly.

Though Kevin Durant got a baseline bucket off the play in Game 4, the overall conversion rate isn’t as good as Bogut would want.

“We’re trying to get on our guys to run it properly,” Bogut said. “We ran it in Sydney a little bit and with the way the Clippers are playing us, it should free up that top lock, but the Clippers are doing some absolutely wild stuff out there so it hasn’t worked as well as I’d like.”

Kevon Looney is more forgiving of the play’s results.

“It’s a great play,” Looney said. “He’s just such a smart player and everybody respects his opinion. I don’t think a lot of players can just come in and make up their own play, but Bogues has seniority and everybody respects his IQ level. Only Bogues can do that.”

NBA defense is changing on the fly, in response to the ever-increasing value of 3-point shooting. If teams are prioritizing 3s over everything else, defenses must alter decades-long assumptions about what the offense wants to do. “Top locking” is the inversion of that old defensive rule about staying between your man and the basket. When a defensive player top locks, he is intentionally keeping his man between himself and the basket. It’s not the most unusual tactic, but the Clippers are taking it to a new extreme by multiplying the approach. Due to fears about compromised help defense, almost no one uses a top lock on two players simultaneously, as the Clippers are using on Steph Curry and Klay Thompson on the play below.


“It’s like how Utah’s guarding James Harden with the ball, but without the ball,” Bogut said, making reference to another team’s radical defensive approach. “So the Clippers are guarding Steph and Klay with their backs to the halfcourt line, and making them go to the basket, which is kind of unheard of to do on both sides.”

As NBA strategy keeps evolving new complexities, teams might have greater use for players who offer a side of coaching acumen. This is a kind of meaningful knowledge that can’t quite be captured by analytical methods, at least not yet. It’s a market inefficiency that will remain abstract, at least for a while. How do you quantify how one player’s observations help the team overall?

Before this season, the Warriors decided to go forward with a youth movement. David West and Zaza Pachulia were on their way out, so it was time for young substitutes to get some run, learn and grow into future rotation players. That plan didn’t quite work out, in part because Jordan Bell fell out of the rotation and first-round draft pick Jacob Evans failed to ever crack it. This season is one that has brought certain issues into stark relief for the Warriors. One of those is the value of veteran wisdom. Enter the Australian curmudgeon, stepping up to fill the void after DeMarcus Cousins’ devastating quad injury, and offering guidance to everyone else.

“He’s still an a$$hole, that ain’t changed,” said a grinning Looney, who was a rookie in Bogut’s last season with the Warriors. “But he was always nice to his teammates and he’s great to me. I say, he’s probably the smartest, one of the smartest basketball players I ever played with. Him and Andre (Iguodala) and Draymond (Green), IQ level is crazy.”

Bogut’s return has been a bright spot in a season that, at times, has seemed like a slog. There have been a few times where you can spy an otherwise stoic Durant cracking a smile in response to a Bogut comment.

After Game 3, KD said of his newest teammate: “He’s a smart basketball player, man. Obviously being here, knowing the system helps. I think he could play that way anywhere. Just directing the offense when he needs to, rebounding, being in the right spots. His talking, his energy, just everything since he been here been top of the line, especially his talk, how he guides guys out there every possession.”

“I get along with most of our guys in the locker room,” Bogut said of receiving praise from KD. “I try to be vocal and when our energy’s down, try get our energy up and Kevin’s been great. Kevin is Kevin, like he said in the interview. He’s one of the best players in the world and at times a little frustrated with the referees, or certain looks that he has, but we just try to keep him locked in and just tell him he’s the best player in the world and keep doing what you’re doing.”

On whether he’ll coach basketball in the future, Bogut is currently noncommittal.

“I would think about it,” he said.

Having children has brought about a new perspective, but also new commitments. It’s difficult for the veteran big to envision life on the road with kids in the picture. For now, the Warriors will take this limited time offer deal they’ve stumbled upon. For the price of $486,892, they get stout defense, hard screens, passing and some coaching on the side.

(Photo: Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images)

What did you think of this story?

MEH

SOLID

 

[G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman]

Thanks sir!

 

[dza]

This trash ass bench

 

[ryderldb]

This trash ass bench

We’ve known about the bench all year. This game was all about non existent defense until the middle of the 4th quarter and rebounding. How many times you just gonna give up the lane to Montrez?

 

[Stone]

Once again, offensively they played well enough to win but they gave up another 130 points at home

 

[yseJ]

We’ve known about the bench all year. This game was all about non existent defense until the middle of the 4th quarter and rebounding. How many times you just gonna give up the lane to Montrez?

Exactly

 

[Roland Coltrane]

We’ve known about the bench all year. This game was all about non existent defense until the middle of the 4th quarter and rebounding. How many times you just gonna give up the lane to Montrez?

It wasn't just the bench doing that. Kerr is being thoroughly outcoached
Montrezl been doing the same shyt all series

As much as it pains me to say it, these nikkas deserve whatever happens to em at this point

 

[Roland Coltrane]

also Kerr isn't running enough plays for Steph

 

[Roland Coltrane]

Clippers coach Doc Rivers went for the head of the Warriors’ snake. The defending champions have four heads. But one, he was convinced, must be taken out. Stephen Curry had 38 points on 16 shots with seven assists in Game 1, and 22 at the half of Game 2. So Rivers made a switch.

“We’re trying to trap Steph (Curry) whenever he gets the ball off a pick,” Rivers said. “So we’re just trying our best to keep him in the box as much as we can, because you know when he gets loose, nothing good happens. I thought he dominated the first three games, the first two games, and we just felt like we had to do something. And so it’s been good so far.”

Definitely good. In the next three-and-a-half games, Curry has totaled 64 points on 19-for-49 shooting. By comparison, Lou Williams has totaled 90 points on 30-for-58 shooting in the same 14 quarters. The Warriors still have Kevin Durant, for which the Clippers have no answer, and Klay Thompson snapped out of his shooting slump in Game 3. But Curry has been tempered.

And the Clippers are still alive.

Your move, Steve Kerr.

Because Game 5 made it clear that the Warriors need to adjust. The defending champ’s 129-121 home loss in Game 5 has stretched this series further than anyone expected. The Warriors find themselves in a series now, the pressure mounting on their shoulders. Largely because the Clippers’ strength meshes so well with the Warriors’ weakness.

The Clippers’ second unit is killing the Warriors. That has something to do with two of their best players, in Williams and Montrezl Harrell, coming off the Clippers’ bench. Those two have exploited the Warriors’ weak spots and the Warriors head back to Los Angeles for Game 6 needing answers in a hurry.

This is unchartered territory for these Warriors. They haven’t dealt with this since Durant joined the Warriors. They haven’t been put in this spot, where they have to adjust to survive.

“Not since Memphis in 2015,” Curry said.

It’s always the Warriors forcing opponents to adjust, to rearrange the plan to thwart what they are doing. But the two-time defending champions find themselves needing to bend what they do because of their opponent. To put the No. 8 seed away, the top-seeded Warriors have to adjust.

They can’t just lean on the inevitability of their talent anymore. The Clippers have figured out too much. They’re feeling too good. Danger is too close for the Warriors to simply wait until the Clippers start playing like an eighth-seed again.

“When we get a nice lead, we just tend to relax a little bit,” Durant said after having his career-playoff-high 45 points spoiled. “I said it before, teams are looking for something just to get them back into the game, you know what I’m saying? If we foul a 3-point shooter or turn the rock over or we shoot a few bad shots in a row, teams get going, they build some confidence. Because they’re already playing loose, with nothing to lose. Those shots, they don’t have no pressure on them.”

Time for Kerr to work some magic instead of waiting for the championship gear to kick in. He’s got to switch to manual transmission mode.

What can he do? It’s become imperative he gets rid of his regular-season rotation.

The Warriors trailed much of the first quarter but closed strong enough to take a 41-37 lead entering the second quarter. That’s when Kerr went to his reserve unit: Thompson, Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala, Alfonzo McKinnie and Andrew Bogut. One scorer and four shooters the Clippers will happily let shoot.

The problem with this rotation is the Clippers’ second-quarter unit included Williams, Harrell, Danilo Gallinari — three starter-quality players. The Warriors played 4:36 with Curry, Durant and Draymond Green on the bench. Thompson got a rhythm going but the Warriors still squandered the lead and were trailing when Durant checked back in the game at the 7:28 mark. It was another minute, 26 seconds before Curry and Green returned. The Warriors were down five when they finally turned to their best lineup, the Hamptons 5, at the 4:26 mark.

All the momentum was already gone. The Clippers were in a scary groove.

Kerr uses those first six minutes of the second and fourth quarters as rest for the stars. But they can’t afford to hold on and eat minutes. Not against the Clippers, who save their best players for this exact window. The Warriors got down by as many as nine points and went into the half trailing 71-63.

Williams, Harrell and Gallinari combined for 28 points in the quarter. The Warriors totaled 22. Curry, who sat for six minutes, was scoreless after taking just two shots while the Clippers took control of the game.

Kerr brought his stars back in sooner the next time around. Durant started the fourth quarter this time and Curry came back at the 8:03 mark, two minutes earlier than normal. But the problem came at the end of the third when he pulled Durant. Part of his rotation pattern, dating back to the regular season, was sitting Durant for the final two-plus minutes of the first and third quarters and bringing him back at about the eight-minute mark of the second and fourth quarters. But Durant was cooking in the third quarter with 14 points. As soon as he checked out, at the 1:41 mark, the Clippers went on a run.

Curry spent the final possessions without any shooters — Thompson didn’t come back in until 14.1 seconds left — facing double-teams at every turn. The Clippers scored the final seven points of the third, pushing a three-point deficit to 10, squashing all the Warriors’ momentum.

Now, behind the eight ball, Kerr had to play Durant and Thompson the entire fourth quarter. Fatigue got to them as they combined to shoot 6 for 17 from the field, including 2 for 9 from 3. Curry, who played the final eight minutes, took just four shots in the fourth quarter — the last one a 3 after the game was all but over.

What else can Kerr do?

Maybe Kerr can throw a double-team at Williams. The Warriors have great individual defenders in Iguodala and Thompson. But when Williams gets hot, he’s not a guy you can cover with just one player. And Williams has broken down the defense severely in Oakland, leading the Clippers to 214 points in its last six quarters at Oracle.

Maybe Kerr can start Kevon Looney or play the Hamptons 5 more, since the Clippers have pulled their centers and gone small with JaMychal Green and Harrell alternating as the center. The Clippers’ Green is a stretch four who can shoot the 3, and Harrell is a quick and aggressive forward who is too quick for a true center. Bogut is at a disadvantage with the Clippers having five scoring options to spread open the court.

Maybe Kerr can do something to get Curry free from the double-teams, seeing as how it is clear Durant needs some scoring help. Perhaps more Curry-Durant pick-and-rolls are in order.

In 2015, when the Warriors were searching for answers against Memphis, Kerr’s staff came up with a plan for Bogut to defend shooting guard Tony Allen. Draymond Green defended Marc Gasol and Harrison Barnes matched up against a bigger Zach Randolph. Since Allen is a poor shooter, Bogut could sag off and help in the paint, have Barnes’ back as he fronted Randolph.

It worked like a charm as it clogged the paint and forced Allen to make plays, which he couldn’t do. The Warriors won the series and went onto the Finals. There, Kerr made another famous adjustment: replacing Bogut in the starting lineup with Iguodala. It spread the floor and changed the pace of the series. Cleveland’s bigs, who were dominating the Warriors inside, had their minutes slashed because they couldn’t keep up with the Warriors’ “Death Lineup.”

Kerr and his staff checkmated two teams on the way to a championship, giving them a reputation as master adjusters. No one expected them to need it this early, not against the Clippers. But they have to do something.

— Reported from Oakland

(Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

 

[Roland Coltrane]