SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Sam Amick breaks down the Rockets' big Game 2 victory that sends the Western Conference finals to Oracle Arena tied at one game apiece. USA TODAY Sports
SAN FRANCISCO – Ask anyone with the Houston Rockets, and they’ll chuckle at all this criticism about their isolation-heavy offense in the Western Conference finals.
As coach Mike D’Antoni said adamantly after his team’s Game 1 loss to Golden State, and as James Harden & Co. proved yet again when the Rockets bounced back to win Game 2, this is the iso art they perfected all season long en route to winning an NBA-best 65 games. And they did it, by the way, at a historic level.
But the Warriors can’t make the same claim, as their chosen method is the free-flowing, ball-sharing offense in which they try to pass the ball at least 300 times per game. Yet as this series continues with Game 3 at Oracle Arena on Sunday, there’s an offensive development brewing that could spell trouble for the defending champs.
They’re playing the Rockets’ style even more than the Rockets themselves did during the regular season. Let us explain…
- The Warriors, who ranked 17th in isolation possessions during the regular season at 6.9 per game, are averaging 25.5 isolation possessions in the first two games against Houston (27 and 24, respectively, according to Synergy Sports). Not only is that nearly four times their norm, but it’s nearly twice as much as Houston’s regular season mark of 15.6 that led the league.
This is happening because both the Rockets and the Warriors boast defenses that are athletic and versatile enough to allow for near-constant switching – defenders at every position switching the man they’re guarding when they run into a screen rather than fighting over or under it. That approach leads to less ball movement and an uptick in isolation play.
But thus far, the Warriors are the ones paying the steeper price for this philosophical faceoff because this isn’t what the league’s top-ranked offense does. So now you have two-time MVP Stephen Curry running ragged on both ends, with the Rockets targeting him on defense and forcing him and Kevin Durant into isolation mode on offense. Neither style of play is Curry’s preference, and it’s quite clearly having an effect on his game.
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Not only has Curry been held to 18 and 16 points, respectively, in the first two games, but the game’s best three-point shooter has hit just two of 13 from beyond the arc. Curry, who is six games into his return from the left knee injury that cost him nearly six weeks, swears that he’s fully healthy. His flurry of effective drives in Game 2 – many of them including Curry-esque weaves and spins – would tend to corroborate that stance.
The Rockets, like so many others, are assuming there’s a fatigue/rhythm/rust factor at play that is working to their benefit.
“Golden State has made us go to another level (defensively) with their offense that if you just guard it (conventionally), it’s unguardable, so it makes us switch,” D’Antoni told USA TODAY Sports on Saturday. “And there are a lot of problems with switching. It’s not like it’s going to solve all the problems, but they make us switch. And our offense makes them (switch), and they’ve been really good at switching.
“Now obviously in switches, you’ve got to pick on (someone). And (Curry) isn’t bad, but if he’s the worst of the five, you’re not going to pick on the All-Defensive player (or) the Defensive Player of the Year. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”
Need more evidence that the Warriors are being forced to change their offensive identity at the most important point of the season? Consider this…
- Before this series, Golden State’s only two playoff losses had also been the only two games in which they failed to pass the ball at least 300 times (Game 4 of the first round against San Antonio; Game 3 of the second round against New Orleans). Against Houston, the Warriors – who ranked fourth in passes made per game during the regular season at 322.7 – had 283 passes in Game 1 and 272 in Game 2.
- Durant might need to ping Alaska Airlines for a new marketing slogan. Near the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland and San Francisco, there is a billboard featuring Durant dribbling that boasts “One on one service.”
Yet while it might seem like a positive for Golden State that Durant has had two of his three highest scoring outings of the playoffs against Houston (38 and 37 points), the Warriors’ offense demands more balance. In the regular season, Golden State lost all five games in which Durant scored at least 39 points (four of those games came without Curry due to injury). What’s more, Durant – who averaged 5.4 assists during the regular season – has just one total assist in the two games against the Rockets.
Meanwhile, Warriors coach Steve Kerr and his staff spent the past three days trying to find solutions for all these unique challenges.
“Well, they do a ton of switching, like we do, and they've got a lot of guys who they may not be the Greek Freak (Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo) or (Durant), but they're good-sized guys with (Trevor) Ariza, (P.J.) Tucker, (Eric) Gordon,” Kerr said. “These guys are good, solid defenders, and they've eliminated a lot of holes in their defense from the past few years by adding more defenders, PJ and (Luc) Mbah a Moute. So they've made it tougher in the half court for sure, and they've done a really good job with their defense, and the stats show it.”
Follow USA TODAY Sports' Sam Amick on Twitter.
Read Again Brow https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2018/05/20/rockets-forced-warriors-offensive-comfort-zone-steph-curry-kevin-durant/626882002/
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