NBA Fantasy Trends: Stats & Pod: Warriors Preview
All those blowouts have been forgiven. The Warriors pulled off three comeback wins and are on their way to defend their championship from last year while looking to add a title to their 73-win season. They were trailing in the second half in each of those three wins and destroyed the Thunder with the triple. In Game 6 and 7, they outscored the Thunder by 84 points from beyond the 3-point line. The Thunder won basically every other aspect of the game, but three is greater than two after all.
To nobody’s surprise, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry did most of the damage from deep. They both broke the previous record of 28 treys in a seven-game series with Klay hitting 30 and Steph hitting 32.
Curry looked a heck of a lot better and his production from inside the arc was huge. He upped his shots in the paint to 7.0 attempts per game to also help his assist total. The Thunder did a really good job of stopping the pick-and-roll, but Curry was just phenomenal in isolation. The Cavs are going to have to put Kyrie Irving on him a bunch, which spells trouble after Kyrie was shredded against Kyle Lowry.
The Thunder really tried to stop Klay, but they simply couldn’t. Perhaps the biggest bucket of the series was when Klay hit a trey in transition after an Andre Iguodala steal:
You can see Andre Roberson calling for help to pick up Klay, but Kevin Durant was too late. The Cavs are really going to have to be on their A game for transition defense.
Draymond Green snapped out of his funk. He looked to struggle against Serge Ibaka while at the five, but he wasn’t forcing plays nearly as much in the final three games of the series. Based on what the Warriors did the Cavs with Draymond in pick-and-roll sets, Dray should be a huge part of the offense. He’ll also really have to be effective on weak-side defense to limit LeBron, especially as the center.
That leads us to one of the more compelling strategic moves on the Warriors. The Warriors group of Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Harrison Barnes and Green was the NBA’s best lineup with at least 80 minutes and it wasn’t really close. However, the Thunder really neutralized it early on. In the first four games of the OKC series, that group played 34 minutes together with a woeful minus-35.3 net rating. OKC”s length was the key to limiting the Warriors from deep while they were able to run them up and down the court in transition, too.
It all changed lately, especially in the last two. That lineup was used for 23 minutes combined in Game 6 and 7 with a net rating of plus-31.9. They made 10 treys in that playing time with a 61.7 true shooting percentage. The Thunder used both big and small lineups against them and it didn’t really work, especially in Game 6.
The death lineup is going to be huge in The Finals. Last year, you might remember Warriors assistant Nick U’Ren came up with the idea to start Iguodala over Andrew Bogut. Based on its success last year, that lineup should get another start for Game 1. The Warriors didn’t use that lineup against the Cavs during the regular season, though. Harrison Barnes didn’t play in the first game on Christmas and the Warriors blew out the Cavs in the second game. In the playoffs last year, the Dubs had a ton of success against the Cavs with that lineup. They used it for 70 minutes in the six games with a plus-21.8 net rating. They assisted on 68 percent of their buckets in that time, which is really the story for the Warriors offense.
2015 Finals MVP Andre Iguodala is going to be a key player in The Finals once again. He was very effective on the offensive end against the Cavs during the regular season, averaging 14.5 points, 2.5 boards, 4.0 assists, 0.5 blocks, 0.5 steals and 2.5 treys on a whopping 77.1 true shooting percentage in his 27 minutes per game.
In Game 7 vs. OKC, almost all of Iguodala’s minutes came at the same time as Kevin Durant with Iguodala’s 43 minutes and KD’s 46. That should be a similar plan against LeBron James. With the way the Cavs offense runs with so many drive-and-kick plays, his defense might be the most important aspect of this series.
Of the 202 treys the Cavs made in these playoffs, LeBron made a pass to the shooter on 65 of those. Kyrie Irving passed it to the 3-point shooter 38 times. That means those two guys set up the 3-pointer more than half the time. Keeping them out of the lane will be a chief concern to prevent defensive breakdowns.
So what do you do with Harrison Barnes now? The Warriors totally abandoned the usual starting lineup on Monday with the group of Barnes, Curry, Thompson, Green and Bogut not playing together at all. They only played eight minutes in Game 6 with all of that playing time coming in the first half. Considering how perimeter defense will be key, Barnes should still get plenty of minutes. While his offense has disappeared with only 20 points combined in the last three wins, his defense has been solid. He’ll be wide open all series, so Barnes could make an impact in the scoring column. The Cavs certainly aren’t losing sleep worrying about Harry B.
Andrew Bogut is probably more likely to come off the bench than Barnes for Game 1. Besides a magnificent Game 5, Bogut really looked tired in the series against the Thunder. If Iggy can’t stay in front of LeBron, the Dubs might have to turn to Bogut more often. If he still looks slow, we might see more Festus Ezeli.
I’ll be back tomorrow morning for Daily Dose and the Cavs side of this.
Until then, here’s today’s podcast. Steve Alexander and I talked about Game 7, the Thunder going forward and preview part of The Finals.
