Post#996 » by picc » Tue Jun 21, 2016 4:32 am
re: Curry's defense
As harsh as i've been on Curry for his playoffs, I feel this is the one place its appropriate to defend him.
The Cavs gameplan was to switch any of the primary offensive players on Steph, yes, because he is the weakest defender in the lineup, but moreso to get him in foul trouble. They were deliberately trying to remove him from the game, even more than to score on him. It worked, due to some typically careless play by Steph, but what exactly happened on these switches?
I don't know the stats for Lebron's fg% when matched up with Curry on a switch, but I doubt it'd be what you expect. From my observation, he defended James as well as a person his size physically could. Curry was consistently staying in front of Lebron, only really getting abused when James was able to get low post position and go straight up. If you are judging his defense by how well he did being switched onto Lebron "Hulk" James, there's something fundamentally wrong.
Furthermore, you can point to Kyrie's success against him in isolation, but what I saw in the finals was Kyrie doing to Steph what he did to nearly everyone during the playoffs. He was smoking Klay Thompson and Livingston in isolation as well. The shots Irving was hitting over Steph he would have hit over anyone under 6'7. That last dagger 3 in game 7 was a terrible shot, that he would have gotten off against any point guard with possible exception of John Wall.
What I'm seeing is Curry being demolished for his defense against A) A 6'9 SF built like Karl Malone, and B) A career isolation scorer who was automatic finishing at the rim and shooting over anyone smaller than a 3. That doesnt make any sense at all to me. Steph's defense was the one thing he did at his standard levels this series. They sought him out on switches, but its not his fault the Cavs desperately wanted to get him out of the game - what's he supposed to do, not play?
Really interested to see James FG% on switches vs Curry. Steph was good in the passing lanes and got punished by refs on some brutal foul calls all series, but by and large he was spectacular staying in front of his man and putting a hand up. If the guy hits, which Cleveland did, what else are you supposed to do but shake his hand?
re: Curry's offense
Steph's offense, otoh, I feel was exposed in more than one way.
For one, I think its fair to attribute more of GS's offensive efficacy, and thus Steph's, to Draymond Green than we prior believed. The trap --> slip pass --> made play that made them such a juggernaut over the past couple years is so successful obviously because Steph demands the attention - but it wouldn't have the same potency if Green wasn't so outstandingly versatile a receiver. He can handle, pass, and shoot like a guard, with SF like mobility and quickness. So I think its fair to say he has a larger role on offense than we thought possible, given who the initial pass is coming from. I don't have the knowledge to say exactly how much, but its obvious the synergy between Steph's gravity and Green's skillset is far, far greater than the sum of their parts. Which is part of the reason I now firmly believe Green is just as valuable to the team as Steph. But thats for another thread.
Second, one underrated thing CLE did with their defense was spread the trap. Steph wasn't able to make the same passes he had all season because (and I have no idea the hell how) Cleveland managed to clog the passing lanes that nobody else has been able to. Even with Kevin Love. The passing angles available were extremely slim, and a passing savant like CP3 or Nash could have made them, but Steph clearly showed he's nowhere near their levels as fundamental passing guards. Teams are going to watch a lot of tape on this series when they determine HOW to trap GS in the upcoming future.
Third, Steph's struggles illustrated a minor aspect of why I believe its been so rare for point guards to lead championship teams. His lack of physicality is a problem when it comes to sophisticated defenses trying to stop him from scoring. When a player relies on screens, the opposing team is put in an easier position to take them out of the play via hedging or trapping. That's no problem when your teammates are hitting and you can make an efficient pass out of the trap. But neither of those was true for Steph in the finals. Kyrie demolished - DEMOLISHED - the PG matchup halfway because he doesn't require a screen a operate at peak proficiency, and may even prefer not to get one. That kind of ball won't necessarily get you the most wins through an 82 game season, but all it takes is a few hot games to win a best of 7 playoff series. Everytime people say iso ball is dead, it wins another championship. Players who are comfortable scoring independent of the rest of the team don't sit well with many posters, but coincidentally have been the cornerstones for the most title teams.
Steph never looked comfortable with his own game out there, and never gained the confidence Kyrie did by dominating his individual matchups. This contributed to Steph letting himself be taken out of games, and instead letting far, far less talented teammates tackle the shotclock-inspired isolations that he should have been running his ass to the ball for. They needed Steph to shoot more than he did, be more aggressive than he was, but he wouldn't allow himself to, partly because he's not a natural leader, and partly because he lost confidence along the way. I've heard the "he was just trusting his teammates" rationale, which I reject because he was taking every hero shot during the regular season, and because there is no circumstance under which Festus Ezeli, Andre Iguodala, or Harrison Barnes isolating to shoot is a preferable option to Stephen Curry isolating to shoot. He just unselfish'd his way to the most legendary choke in NBA history, and its hard to continue to take seriously the criticisms of this style of play when the players who utilize it are home polishing their many rings.
His decision-making has been talked about ad naseum, but its worth minorly noting that he is so unable to control his careless habits that he'll continue them even after visually admonishing himself. Its one thing to take a bad shot - you may be a bad shot maker who can justify the attempt even if you miss. I can excuse almost any shot Curry takes. But to totally blow so many fundamentally simple basketball actions like he does, ie. non-duress passing or dribbling turnovers, communicates to me that he's not taking the game (in a universal sense) as seriously as his predecessors, or even many of his contemporaries. That's a major flag if I'm deciding how much trust to place in my teams best player and leader.
re: Curry's intangibles
Steph is not a leader. When he's feeling cocky he'll take a high volume of absurdly difficult shots and may even make them, but he has little to no rallying effect on his teammates and even less grasp of what the team needs from him at any given moment. His one and only response to any adverse situation is to chuck a three pointer. He displays none of the strategic thinking many of the other great players did, none of the floor generalship that many other great players (and especially great point guards) did, and very little understanding of what his team needs any given moment, if its not a three pointer. He's an extremely immature player whose lack of alpha characteristics and basketball IQ are drastically overshadowed by his unprecedented shotmaking ability....except when they aren't. Which over the past few seasons, has just happened to be on the biggest stages.
He has a tendency to allow himself to be taken entirely out of a basketball game in a way I've rarely seen from a superstar caliber player, never seen from a leader, and definitely never seen from a superstar caliber leader. If he makes a couple attempts to get the ball and is denied by the defense, he'll simply give up and wait by the sideline for something to happen, no matter what the stakes of the play or game are. No verbal quarterbacking, no pointing to mismatches, none of the things the great guards I've watched in my lifetime do on the rare occasion they simply cannot get the ball. If the clock is running down, he'll make no attempt to get it, content to let whatever happens happen. Which isn't a mortal sin for an allstar level player.
For a unanimous, 2-time MVP point guard being compared to all-time greats and chasing a historic record-setting season, its completely unacceptable. And those are the standards we're rightly judging him by. This isn't Ricky Rubio blowing a playoff run. When we criticize Steph, we're doing so with the greatest NBA players of all time in mind. That's who he's built against when he's winning, so that's who he'll be built against when he loses. Simply a "fair" statline isn't good enough for Stephen Curry. Not with the year we've had.
In a lot of ways he simply let this postseason pass him by, and thus let the chance to make history pass him by. Robotically pointing to his true shooting % in an attempt to rationalize his play just misses the big picture by so much. It genuinely and sincerely makes me sad that this is what basketball gets reduced to.
