These Warriors play a beautiful brand of basketball.
Yes, it helps when Steph Curry is showing off his superhuman powers.
But the addition of Chris Paul — while not paying full dividends yet — to a team with a clear understanding of both pace and space has created an aesthetic juggernaut.
In the prescient words of Deion Sanders (and no one else): look good, play good.
The Warriors played well in their season-opening loss to the Suns, and they played well again in Friday’s road debut against the Kings.
Surely, there will be things to nit-pick in both contests — the Warriors nearly choking away a big, late lead Friday wasn’t ideal — but the Warriors have acquitted themselves nicely against two likely Western Conference playoff teams to start the season.
And you can’t be too hard on these Dubs — they won their first road game of this season nearly a month earlier than last season.
This has been a good start. There’s no juggling for answers or deep early-season experimentation. The Warriors are a team that knows what they are about.
Adding Draymond Green to the mix in the coming days should improve this self-confidence.
The Warriors remain a team that’s not quite at the elite level they once solely inhabited. Even with Curry, they’re not as talented as the league’s three or four best teams.
But for the next few weeks — perhaps months — you might be fooled into thinking that’s untrue.
The Dubs know what they’re about, night in, night out. And in this topsy-turvy league, that will go a long way to making up a gap.
When a plan comes together
Let’s give some credit to Warriors coach Steve Kerr and his staff: this was a really clever play to seal the game for the Dubs.
It starts with Andrew Wiggins (who had a bounce-back game Friday) playing point. That’s to take advantage of the fact that Domantas Sabonis was guarding him. That’s a perimeter mismatch, giving the Warriors a one-on-one advantage. One of Wiggins’ options was to blow past the Kings’ center and score.
But the second option was Steph Curry. That’s a pretty good option.
Kerr had Curry come up to set a pick for Wiggins on the perimeter.
Except he never set the pick — he slipped under it.
Sabonis shouldn’t be out in that territory, so he had to slide around the sliding Curry. That forced Curry’s man, Chris Duarte, to start defending Wiggins, who was driving towards the basket.
Wiggins was double-teamed at the 3-point line, but he had momentum to drive to the basket anyway.
Duarte wasn’t wrong in switching. Sabonis was cooked.
The issue was that no Kings defender rotated over to defend the greatest shooter to ever live, who stood outside the arc, waving his arms at Wiggins.
The forward, approaching the restricted area, found Curry with a downright brilliant pass. He leaped and effectively sky-hooked the basketball to the Warriors’ sharpshooter.
A lesser pass gives the Kings time to rotate.
But this pass had enough zip and Curry was set to shoot before the ball arrived in the perfect position to start his motion.
Harrison Barnes and Keegan Murray both tried to reach Curry in that moment (though Murray thought better of it right as Curry caught the ball — he had left Klay Thompson wide open and needed to return to his man). That didn’t matter, though, because Curry only needs a fraction of a second.
The 3 from No. 30 was pure, he hit the Kings with a “night, night,” and the Warriors’ lead became 120-112 with 43 seconds remaining — a margin that wasn’t going to be covered by Sacramento.
A great play was created by the coaches, it was followed by brilliant execution from the players (that Wiggins pass cannot be praised enough.)
That’s some good hoops right there.
Rotation change Dario Šarić’s start to his Warriors career has been rough — there’s no reason to sugar-coat it.
But I like his energy and his ability to space the floor. I think he’ll be a rock-solid player for the Dubs this season. It’s just going to take a bit of time.
Kerr had seen enough of Šarić on Friday to test out a new rotation in the second half. Trayce Jackson-Davis, the 24-year-old rookie out of Indiana took Šarić’s spot as second-unit center for four second-half minutes and played well.
Nothing interesting or memorable came from the rookie, but he was a plus player on the night. He wasn’t a liability.
I’m sure the Warriors coaches will take that from a fourth option at the five.
We’ll if this becomes a normal play for the Warriors with Green sidelined.
