Game 57: Golden State Warriors (28-29) @ Philadelphia 76ers (39-17) l Monday l 7:30pm

[TTP]

The only take here is that an all-time great, arguably the best player of the past decade, is unstoppable when he's on a run like this.

[Negrodamus]

So Steph is going to swoop in and steal the MVP this year by dragging his team to the playoffs, right? Played more games than Joel (50 vs 39).

GSW - 1-7 when Curry isn't playing
PHI - 9-9 when Joel isn't playing
(if my counting is correct, haven't had coffee yet)

Obviously the teams are built differently and the Sixers have a better supporting cast, but it's clear that Steph is much more important to his team's success this year than Joel. I don't think that's how the MVP is really decided anymore, but it's under my consideration.

If the Warriors can get to the 6th seed and bypass the play-in games, then the Warriors are likely playing at an outrageous level and Steph should win it.

[AI_Efficiency]

Have you watched the other games Steph has had during this run? Are all those other coaches of teams that are giving up 40 a night to him also running terrible schemes? Or it's more complicated than that. You can cover him perfectly 95% of the time but the 5% you don't he's going to pull up from 30 and it's a layup for him right now.

"Cover Steph Curry perfectly without your best perimeter defender" just seems like a much higher bar right now than "score more than 15 points in the 3rd quarter".

What happened in the prior quarters doesn’t justify or change the last six minutes since we were still winning at that point. Like when we’re up by 3 at the 6:40 mark in the fourth, pretend the game just started and we’ve been gifted a three point lead. Then Curry goes for 20 in 6 minutes. So we weren’t very effective in those six minutes at stopping him (and his scoring rate in those minutes is obviously higher than like 35 ppg rate or whatever you consider reasonable). I’m not arguing that we could have withstood that had we played better earlier, we certainly should have scored more prior to that. I’m just saying, we played the Curry pick and roll terribly, and 20 points in six minutes was the result. Could we have trapped and Wiggins hits open threes to kill us, sure. But I rather go down that way.

[AI_Efficiency]

Have you watched the other games Steph has had during this run? Are all those other coaches of teams that are giving up 40 a night to him also running terrible schemes? Or it's more complicated than that. You can cover him perfectly 95% of the time but the 5% you don't he's going to pull up from 30 and it's a layup for him right now.

"Cover Steph Curry perfectly without your best perimeter defender" just seems like a much higher bar right now than "score more than 15 points in the 3rd quarter".

Also, to your point about other teams giving up similar outcomes, (1) idk that other teams are giving up 20 point in six minute barrages; (2) other teams might not have a big that is as mobile as embiid who has shown he can move out in space better than many other 5s; and (3) I don’t think we defended the Curry / Draymond pick and roll well earlier either and Curry probably could have gone for a lot more than 49, but GS spread the ball around. If this were the playoffs and we defended the same way, Curry and Draymond would spam that pick and roll relentlessly until we changed our scheme.

[thenbaman]

Curry is just on an insane streak of hotness, watched them play the Celtics the other day and he burned Marcus Smart and other good defenders with shots that ranged from ridiculous to impossible.

The game was still very winnable if any other Sixer scored well other than Jojo.

The Celtics won the game with Curry scoring 47. The Sixers have to have everyone operating at peak performance or their offense is straight bad.

I think that game was at GS as well.

[thenbaman]

So Steph is going to swoop in and steal the MVP this year by dragging his team to the playoffs, right? Played more games than Joel (50 vs 39).

GSW - 1-7 when Curry isn't playing
PHI - 9-9 when Joel isn't playing
(if my counting is correct, haven't had coffee yet)

Obviously the teams are built differently and the Sixers have a better supporting cast, but it's clear that Steph is much more important to his team's success this year than Joel. I don't think that's how the MVP is really decided anymore, but it's under my consideration.

If the Warriors can get to the 6th seed and bypass the play-in games, then the Warriors are likely playing at an outrageous level and Steph should win it.

Not winning the MVP with a .500 team.

[Dnt hate]

This game showed that Kerr is obviously a better coach then Doc, Doc just isn't good at making in game adjustments and probably is a big reasons for his multiple 3-1 comeback losses in the playoffs and someone needs to tell him and help him before the playoffs come around.

Another thing, Embiid was being double and tripled while Curry wasn't at all, Embiid is a better overall player than Curry at this point, I don't get some of you just jumping on the Curry bandwagon and calling him mvp, Doc clearly let Curry have a big game, while Kerr didn't let Embiid have a big game and won as a result

[Negrodamus]

So Steph is going to swoop in and steal the MVP this year by dragging his team to the playoffs, right? Played more games than Joel (50 vs 39).

GSW - 1-7 when Curry isn't playing
PHI - 9-9 when Joel isn't playing
(if my counting is correct, haven't had coffee yet)

Obviously the teams are built differently and the Sixers have a better supporting cast, but it's clear that Steph is much more important to his team's success this year than Joel. I don't think that's how the MVP is really decided anymore, but it's under my consideration.

If the Warriors can get to the 6th seed and bypass the play-in games, then the Warriors are likely playing at an outrageous level and Steph should win it.

Not winning the MVP with a .500 team.

You might have missed it, but I'm saying that he'd be seriously in the conversation for it if he gets 6th place, which is currently the 32-24 Trail Blazers, a record above .500. Luckily for Steph, there are more games this season!

[Mik317]

unless Denver falls off there is no way Jokic doesn't win MVP. Dude has been ballin all season and doesn't have the missed games or meh team thing to hold against him...especially now w/ Murray out.

[phillynative]

Joel Embiid and Steph Curry should be teammates.

[Sixerscan]

Have you watched the other games Steph has had during this run? Are all those other coaches of teams that are giving up 40 a night to him also running terrible schemes? Or it's more complicated than that. You can cover him perfectly 95% of the time but the 5% you don't he's going to pull up from 30 and it's a layup for him right now.

"Cover Steph Curry perfectly without your best perimeter defender" just seems like a much higher bar right now than "score more than 15 points in the 3rd quarter".

What happened in the prior quarters doesn’t justify or change the last six minutes since we were still winning at that point. Like when we’re up by 3 at the 6:40 mark in the fourth, pretend the game just started and we’ve been gifted a three point lead. Then Curry goes for 20 in 6 minutes. So we weren’t very effective in those six minutes at stopping him (and his scoring rate in those minutes is obviously higher than like 35 ppg rate or whatever you consider reasonable). I’m not arguing that we could have withstood that had we played better earlier, we certainly should have scored more prior to that. I’m just saying, we played the Curry pick and roll terribly, and 20 points in six minutes was the result. Could we have trapped and Wiggins hits open threes to kill us, sure. But I rather go down that way.

20 points in 6 minutes isn't some crazy result... you're talking about a league where teams regularly score 115-120 points in a game, that happens fairly often.

Curry played the entire 3rd quarter and the Warriors scored 20 points total then. There are ebbs and flows of every game. Between the Sixers having the 2nd defensive rating in the league, and maybe more relevantly the best defensive rating in 4th quarters, I feel like Doc/Dan Burke have established themselves as having pretty strong defensive schemes (at least in the regular season), and the variable was more having core guys out (what part of the problem down the stretch was scheme versus players just screwing up?) and Curry just being on a crazy run.

Much more disappointed in the Sixers only scoring 41 in the second half.

[Embiid P]

Joel Embiid and Steph Curry should be teammates.

On the Sixers I hope.

[AI_Efficiency]

Have you watched the other games Steph has had during this run? Are all those other coaches of teams that are giving up 40 a night to him also running terrible schemes? Or it's more complicated than that. You can cover him perfectly 95% of the time but the 5% you don't he's going to pull up from 30 and it's a layup for him right now.

"Cover Steph Curry perfectly without your best perimeter defender" just seems like a much higher bar right now than "score more than 15 points in the 3rd quarter".

What happened in the prior quarters doesn’t justify or change the last six minutes since we were still winning at that point. Like when we’re up by 3 at the 6:40 mark in the fourth, pretend the game just started and we’ve been gifted a three point lead. Then Curry goes for 20 in 6 minutes. So we weren’t very effective in those six minutes at stopping him (and his scoring rate in those minutes is obviously higher than like 35 ppg rate or whatever you consider reasonable). I’m not arguing that we could have withstood that had we played better earlier, we certainly should have scored more prior to that. I’m just saying, we played the Curry pick and roll terribly, and 20 points in six minutes was the result. Could we have trapped and Wiggins hits open threes to kill us, sure. But I rather go down that way.

20 points in 6 minutes isn't some crazy result... you're talking about a league where teams regularly score 115-120 points in a game, that happens fairly often.

Curry played the entire 3rd quarter and the Warriors scored 20 points total then. There are ebbs and flows of every game. Between the Sixers having the 2nd defensive rating in the league, and maybe more relevantly the best defensive rating in 4th quarters, I feel like Doc/Dan Burke have established themselves as having pretty strong defensive schemes (at least in the regular season), and the variable was more having core guys out (what part of the problem down the stretch was scheme versus players just screwing up?) and Curry just being on a crazy run.

Much more disappointed in the Sixers only scoring 41 in the second half.

My entire point has been that you can't play drop pick and roll coverage against the Curry/Draymond pick and roll, especially in key possessions. The Houston rockets teams that pushed Golden State were premised on being able to switch everything to combat this pick and roll (and that was when GS had a healthy Klay). The Kevin Love defensive possession in Game 7 is a great example of a hard switch, if you watch that clip you'll see Love fly out after Draymond sets the screen. They weren't going to let Curry walk into a 3. In response to me saying this, you've basically been like, well we usually play good defense, or we should have scored more in the third. Like okay, sure, what does that have to do with whether or not we were defending the Curry pick and roll appropriately. Like 76iology said, you should either trap it or at least have Embiid stay out on the perimeter. Like, unless you're arguing it's is smart to play drop coverage here, I'm not sure what the third quarter, fourth quarter. nba preseason or basketball 40 years ago has to do with this. Seems like just totally ignoring the argument and being like, well this is more important. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. It can be true that scoring more in the third is a high priority, while it also being true that our pick and roll coverage was poor.

Edit: Also, the 20 points in 6 minutes thing was a reference to just Curry. GS as a whole scored more than that. This was because you were acting like Curry's scoring in that stretch was similar to as it always is. He obviously doesn't usually put up 20 per 6 minutes of play time.

[Sixerscan]

What happened in the prior quarters doesn’t justify or change the last six minutes since we were still winning at that point. Like when we’re up by 3 at the 6:40 mark in the fourth, pretend the game just started and we’ve been gifted a three point lead. Then Curry goes for 20 in 6 minutes. So we weren’t very effective in those six minutes at stopping him (and his scoring rate in those minutes is obviously higher than like 35 ppg rate or whatever you consider reasonable). I’m not arguing that we could have withstood that had we played better earlier, we certainly should have scored more prior to that. I’m just saying, we played the Curry pick and roll terribly, and 20 points in six minutes was the result. Could we have trapped and Wiggins hits open threes to kill us, sure. But I rather go down that way.

20 points in 6 minutes isn't some crazy result... you're talking about a league where teams regularly score 115-120 points in a game, that happens fairly often.

Curry played the entire 3rd quarter and the Warriors scored 20 points total then. There are ebbs and flows of every game. Between the Sixers having the 2nd defensive rating in the league, and maybe more relevantly the best defensive rating in 4th quarters, I feel like Doc/Dan Burke have established themselves as having pretty strong defensive schemes (at least in the regular season), and the variable was more having core guys out (what part of the problem down the stretch was scheme versus players just screwing up?) and Curry just being on a crazy run.

Much more disappointed in the Sixers only scoring 41 in the second half.

My entire point has been that you can't play drop pick and roll coverage against the Curry/Draymond pick and roll, especially in key possessions. The Houston rockets teams that pushed Golden State were premised on being able to switch everything to combat this pick and roll (and that was when GS had a healthy Klay). The Kevin Love defensive possession in Game 7 is a great example of a hard switch, if you watch that clip you'll see Love fly out after Draymond sets the screen. They weren't going to let Curry walk into a 3. In response to me saying this, you've basically been like, well we usually play good defense, or we should have scored more in the third. Like okay, sure, what does that have to do with whether or not we were defending the Curry pick and roll appropriately. Like 76iology said, you should either trap it or at least have Embiid stay out on the perimeter. Like, unless you're arguing it's is smart to play drop coverage here, I'm not sure what the third quarter, fourth quarter. nba preseason or basketball 40 years ago has to do with this. Seems like just totally ignoring the argument and being like, well this is more important. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. It can be true that scoring more in the third is a high priority, while it also being true that our pick and roll coverage was poor.

Edit: Also, the 20 points in 6 minutes thing was a reference to just Curry. GS as a whole scored more than that. This was because you were acting like Curry's scoring in that stretch was similar to as it always is. He obviously doesn't usually put up 20 per 6 minutes of play time.

Well they weren't playing drop coverage, agreed that would be dumb. They just weren't blitzing him. Drop coverage is going back to the lane to protect against the drive. Go look at the shots, Embiid (or Dwight) is almost always out at the three point line, and when they're not it's clearly because they're getting caught in no mans land, which make me think this was more an execution issue than a scheme issue.

If I had to guess, it was a combination of Embiid being tired from the load he was carrying on offense and releasing too quick off of Curry because he's used to Simmons being the one recovering. But it was also just Curry pulling up from 30 and making those shots with basically no space because he's Steph Curry.

And you're right, it was 24, not 20, with one of those baskets being when Embiid flies out on Curry and he dishes it to Draymond for an easy shot. That is the limit of all out blitzing a very capable ball handler. I respect that you would have preferred that over the way they played it, but there is a downside there.

Sure Kevin Love all out blitzed Curry, but that was also in a completely different situation. There were 30 seconds left in the game, there was no time on the shot clock, and the Warriors were down 3. You absolutely need to go all out to stop the 3 there.

I just think you're putting too much on Doc/Burke and not giving Steph his props for how hard it is to cover someone shooting like that. Agree to disagree I guess.

[AI_Efficiency]

20 points in 6 minutes isn't some crazy result... you're talking about a league where teams regularly score 115-120 points in a game, that happens fairly often.

Curry played the entire 3rd quarter and the Warriors scored 20 points total then. There are ebbs and flows of every game. Between the Sixers having the 2nd defensive rating in the league, and maybe more relevantly the best defensive rating in 4th quarters, I feel like Doc/Dan Burke have established themselves as having pretty strong defensive schemes (at least in the regular season), and the variable was more having core guys out (what part of the problem down the stretch was scheme versus players just screwing up?) and Curry just being on a crazy run.

Much more disappointed in the Sixers only scoring 41 in the second half.

My entire point has been that you can't play drop pick and roll coverage against the Curry/Draymond pick and roll, especially in key possessions. The Houston rockets teams that pushed Golden State were premised on being able to switch everything to combat this pick and roll (and that was when GS had a healthy Klay). The Kevin Love defensive possession in Game 7 is a great example of a hard switch, if you watch that clip you'll see Love fly out after Draymond sets the screen. They weren't going to let Curry walk into a 3. In response to me saying this, you've basically been like, well we usually play good defense, or we should have scored more in the third. Like okay, sure, what does that have to do with whether or not we were defending the Curry pick and roll appropriately. Like 76iology said, you should either trap it or at least have Embiid stay out on the perimeter. Like, unless you're arguing it's is smart to play drop coverage here, I'm not sure what the third quarter, fourth quarter. nba preseason or basketball 40 years ago has to do with this. Seems like just totally ignoring the argument and being like, well this is more important. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. It can be true that scoring more in the third is a high priority, while it also being true that our pick and roll coverage was poor.

Edit: Also, the 20 points in 6 minutes thing was a reference to just Curry. GS as a whole scored more than that. This was because you were acting like Curry's scoring in that stretch was similar to as it always is. He obviously doesn't usually put up 20 per 6 minutes of play time.

Well they weren't playing drop coverage, agreed that would be dumb. They just weren't blitzing him. Drop coverage is going back to the lane to protect against the drive. Go look at the shots, Embiid (or Dwight) is almost always out at the three point line, and when they're not it's clearly because they're getting caught in no mans land, which make me think this was more an execution issue than a scheme issue.

If I had to guess, it was a combination of Embiid being tired from the load he was carrying on offense and releasing too quick off of Curry because he's used to Simmons being the one recovering. But it was also just Curry pulling up from 30 and making those shots with basically no space because he's Steph Curry.

And you're right, it was 24, not 20, with one of those baskets being when Embiid flies out on Curry and he dishes it to Draymond for an easy shot. That is the limit of all out blitzing a very capable ball handler. I respect that you would have preferred that over the way they played it, but there is a downside there.

Sure Kevin Love all out blitzed Curry, but that was also in a completely different situation. There were 30 seconds left in the game, there was no time on the shot clock, and the Warriors were down 3. You absolutely need to go all out to stop the 3 there.

I just think you're putting too much on Doc/Burke and not giving Steph his props for how hard it is to cover someone shooting like that. Agree to disagree I guess.

Fair enough haha. Given that we aren't going to see Steph again this season probably not really worth worrying about. I don't want to jinx us though and watch Kyrie or Middleton catch fire and start launching from Curry range in a playoff series haha.