Why can’t we run the warriors offense

[seanbig]

Curry is the ultimate off the ball player.

Draymond is one of the smartest players of all time.

Kerr runs laps around Nurse in terms of offensive philosophy.

I don't see how you can follow up #1 and #2 with #3. The issue is personnel. The Raptors don't have talent. Give Nurse a competent lineup and he'll win you a title (see 2019). Give him a half-competent team and he'll win you 58 games and take you on a deep playoff run. Right now our team sucks and there isn't anything Nurse can do about it.

Nurse has never striked me as a great offensive coach. Lowry helped him like crazy in that department.

His offensive schemes never really moved me. It’s very stagnant with very little movement, that’s been a theme for the last 2 years excluding this year.

I’m no basketball nerd so I can’t profess to know the horns play hammer play flex offense yada

I don’t don’t get why we can’t run plays when nurse makes it sound like our defense is so complicated that new players can take months to “ get it”

Why can’t we be more creative on offense when it’s obvious having an ISO heavy offense looks ugly

Why can’t we move the ball more and have people set screens for each other rather than stand in the corner and watch pascal or Fred or GTJ pound the rock for 10+ seconds ???

In our championship year our offense seemed to be the most effective when kawhii was not on the floor although I’m not sure what plays nurse was really running

[ontnut]

Because we don't have arguably the most dominant offensive force in NBA history. That's why.

[Rapsalot]

I game for it. Too many teams run pick and roll. GSW offense or the Spurs against Heat. Extreme ball movement. If we will be just 5 guys might as well.

[fbalmeida]

I'm completely unconvinced by the "we don't have a magical scorer" argument for not running a more movement based offense when in a halfcourt set.

Not having a magical bucket getter seems like more of a reason to have players moving, sprinting actually, off-ball, not less.

[Crazy-Canuck]

Offensively.

1st, they have steph.
Secondly, u need bbiq.
Third, u need shooters.
4th, u need unselfish players.

So many players prefer to play a selfish brand of iso/pnr basketball that they struggle to adjust.

They tried to mold guys like dlo, oubre, etc.. but it just didnt work.

[fbalmeida]

OK, I'm going to address this directly via question:

So because we don't have a magical scorer like Steph, our guys should just... not move off-ball with cuts or backdoor screens and instead rely on... let's see what's left... iso, hero-ball-chucking, and offensive rebounds?

[Ell Curry]

I would like to see us focus the offense more on Barnes and Siakam ballhandling and Trent, OG and Van Vleet using off ball screens to hunt 3s, but on the other hand we're somehow 8th on O and 22nd on D so who knows.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

This is the 2nd time Kerr has built a quick passing offense. Curry, Draymond and Igudala remain from the 2016 offense but everybody else is new. They catch and pass quickly. If a guy with bad court vision tries to catch and immediately pass then there will be too many turnovers.

But I think there is more to it than good court vision. Not all of these guys are known for court vision. Warriors movement without the ball creates people to pass to. But how do Warriors know where to look for the open man?

Kerr may have a method. The Warriors offense would probably be good with Fred VanVleet replacing Curry. Not as good but still good. You won't double VanVleet off the ball like you might do with Curry but VanVleet can still try to play the Curry role. But the other guys need to move without the ball and pass. Not having a Draymond level point forward would hurt. Then you have to figure out how Kerr gets average passers to find the open man quickly.

I think imitating the Warriors offense has potential.Warriors offense might be based on imitating the earlier Spurs offense. But if a team wants to try that kind to imitate that kind of offense they probably should start working on that in the offseason.

Kerr has been influenced by Phil Jackson, Gregg popovich, Mike D'Antoni and Alvin Gentry.. Mark Jackson tried to make Curry play like Mark Jackson and Kerr made Curry play more like Kerr. Kerr was an off th e ball point guard. Spurs had Borris Diaw playing the Draymond Green role and Ginobili could pass. Parker was off the ball a lot. Suns had Joe Johnson as an assistant point guard for Nash. Pippen and Kukoc allowed Kerr and Jordan to play off the ball. Turkoglu allowed Magic gurds to play off the ball. Bogut could handle the Ball like Walton and Saam Lacy.

[Gold Dragon]

I would say that this is a type of offense we are working towards based on our personel.

Our guys are just not there yet. Barnes is a rook but he is not far from playing a Draymond like role on offense. He just has a lot of things to work on right now including his defense and aggressiveness on offense, reading defenses overall, decision making with and without the ball, and just getting used to the speed of the game. But give him a year or two and he will be close.

Fred is a natural fit for the moving off-ball shooting Curry role. Gary can become a release valve and off ball cutter like Klay and he is working on his passing and ball movement which is still a work in progress but showing signs. Pascal's 3 is getting there and as a secondary play maker still needs some work. But if he can draw doubles and kick out better, that would be a good fit. OG could definitely fit right in with 3 point shooting and is getting better with his passing out. Even Banton as a livingston clone is trying to copy the warriors.

All the ball movement is great as long as you don't turn it over which we likely will with our current core not really gelling yet and not quite there yet with passing, positioning, experience and communication.

This core of Pascal, OG, Scottie, Trent and Fred have only played 3 games together. Give them some more time.

[Brinbe]

'we don't have the players' or 'we don't have the time' are piss-poor excuses. the warriors are the team that could run the nick nurse offense or the james harden offense and still be successful because steph is steph. but they do go out of their way to play the way they do because it's effective if you have unselfish players that buy in. it's smart basketball.

in comparison, we run a very basic freelance-based offense right now. Got the double DHO, which usually fails to do much of anything and then watching fred/gary go on 1 on 5 pound the ball and chuck 3s/long 2s. maybe a pascal iso, barnes attempting a jumper and then not getting the ball for a multitude of possessions. maybe that worked with norm/kyle/etc because they've all played together for years and had that chemistry down pat. Norm also had a bit more drive to his game, which helped.

if anything, for a team like ours that lacks high-end talent you'd want to create more offensive structure and organisation instead of just free-wheeling and operating off of vibes, nostalgia, transition buckets and seniority in terms of running an nba offense. but that's what we're doing here and i don't quite understand it. i see it as being way too deferential to the guys still left from 2019 instead of doing what's best for the future of the franchise. a lot of selfishness which is antithetical to what masai has been preaching from the jump.

at some point nick nurse has gotta be the head coach instead of a friend even if that has the potential to hurt some feelings.

[Indeed]

This is the 2nd time Kerr has built a quick passing offense. Curry, Draymond and Igudala remain from the 2016 offense but everybody else is new. They catch and pass quickly. If a guy with bad court vision tries to catch and immediately pass then there will be too many turnovers.

But I think there is more to it than good court vision. Not all of these guys are known for court vision. Warriors movement without the ball creates people to pass to. But how do Warriors know where to look for the open man?

Kerr may have a method. The Warriors offense would probably be good with Fred VanVleet replacing Curry. Not as good but still good. You won't double VanVleet off the ball like you might do with Curry but VanVleet can still try to play the Curry role. But the other guys need to move without the ball and pass. Not having a Draymond level point forward would hurt. Then you have to figure out how Kerr gets average passers to find the open man quickly.

I think imitating the Warriors offense has potential.Warriors offense might be based on imitating the earlier Spurs offense. But if a team wants to try that kind to imitate that kind of offense they probably should start working on that in the offseason.

Kerr has been influenced by Phil Jackson, Gregg popovich, Mike D'Antoni and Alvin Gentry.. Mark Jackson tried to make Curry play like Mark Jackson and Kerr made Curry play more like Kerr. Kerr was an off th e ball point guard. Spurs had Borris Diaw playing the Draymond Green role and Ginobili could pass. Parker was off the ball a lot. Suns had Joe Johnson as an assistant point guard for Nash. Pippen and Kukoc allowed Kerr and Jordan to play off the ball. Turkoglu allowed Magic gurds to play off the ball. Bogut could handle the Ball like Walton and Saam Lacy.

I think Barnes showed he reads play like Draymond, so I don't think that is the issue with our offense. Besides, Banton at 6'9 is a point guard who has more than enough guard skills and vision, which also showed in the last game.

The problem in lack of shooters for sure, and our shooters are not good with their vision. Trent isn't the type of person who can pass it immediately without turnovers. VanVleet isn't able to make a pass immediately until he got too deep and think of passing out.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, we don't have shooters screening shooters for creating confusion like the Warriors can do off the ball. We are not able to create cuts, no one is getting double, and no one is being chased off ball after screen who can make play (maybe only VanVleet).

I don't see how we can play the Warriors offense. We probably need to be a mid-range shooting team with the focus on rebounding this year, then next year with a few developed their shooting, we can run better motion offense with the paint opened up a bit more.

[Danny1616]

This is the 2nd time Kerr has built a quick passing offense. Curry, Draymond and Igudala remain from the 2016 offense but everybody else is new. They catch and pass quickly. If a guy with bad court vision tries to catch and immediately pass then there will be too many turnovers.

But I think there is more to it than good court vision. Not all of these guys are known for court vision. Warriors movement without the ball creates people to pass to. But how do Warriors know where to look for the open man?

Kerr may have a method. The Warriors offense would probably be good with Fred VanVleet replacing Curry. Not as good but still good. You won't double VanVleet off the ball like you might do with Curry but VanVleet can still try to play the Curry role. But the other guys need to move without the ball and pass. Not having a Draymond level point forward would hurt. Then you have to figure out how Kerr gets average passers to find the open man quickly.

I think imitating the Warriors offense has potential.Warriors offense might be based on imitating the earlier Spurs offense. But if a team wants to try that kind to imitate that kind of offense they probably should start working on that in the offseason.

Kerr has been influenced by Phil Jackson, Gregg popovich, Mike D'Antoni and Alvin Gentry.. Mark Jackson tried to make Curry play like Mark Jackson and Kerr made Curry play more like Kerr. Kerr was an off th e ball point guard. Spurs had Borris Diaw playing the Draymond Green role and Ginobili could pass. Parker was off the ball a lot. Suns had Joe Johnson as an assistant point guard for Nash. Pippen and Kukoc allowed Kerr and Jordan to play off the ball. Turkoglu allowed Magic gurds to play off the ball. Bogut could handle the Ball like Walton and Saam Lacy.

The Warriors ball movement doesn't work without Curry attracting so much attention defensively and having an insane motor who doesn't stop moving without the ball. Curry is so lethal he has to be guarded instantly at half court which spaces out the defense like crazy. The Warriors offense is predicated on Curry getting open and finding him. However, if the defense overcommits like we did the other night, he is simply used a decoy that leaves other players wide open. They have Draymond who is an excellent quarterback in that sense. This is why with Klay at 100% the Warriors won 67 games in 2015 and 73 games in 2016. They were virtually unstoppable during the regular season when they had another elite shooter next to Curry. Last year they didn't have a secondary shooter next to Curry, but Poole has somewhat filled that role and become a very good scorer.

[KrazyP]

The Warriors had the 20th ranked offense last year and several of the key players this year (Curry, Wiggins, Green, Poole, Looney, Lee) were actually part of last year's squad.

Some it comes down to building chemistry, continuity, trust and role definition over time. Some of it obviously comes down to coaching and the system employed.

Experience is most likely also a factor.

Years of experience of the top 10 rotation guys that are playing:

Warriors - 76
Raptors - 29

Thats a pretty large discrepency. Put in another way - the average guy in the Warriors rotation has about 5 more years of experience than the average guy in the Raptors rotation. Experience matters.

In terms of role definition, you likely only want to have 2 dribbling/iso guys in the half court offense and the rest of guys geared towards passing and moving the ball. One problem with the existing roster as constructed is that the Raps have several decent scorers that are all basically on the same level - VanVleet, OG, Siakam, Trent and Barnes coming on strong...this makes it hard to establish a hierarchy. Who takes a backseat?

Nurse is a great coach and he will make adjustments over time. Ujiri/Webster are a great management team and they together with Nurse will figure out which players fit and which dont and make adjustments as necessary. 18 games into a development year when more than half the roster has been turned over is too soon to make a proper assessment on anything.

[TDotAllStar]

The flex offense they used requires a lot of shooting. It is shooter setting screen for shooter off the ball, which creates confusion.

It won't work for us, because teams can give us space to run around the screen.
This is how our defense looks against their offense:
https://www.nba.com/stats/events/?GameEventID=52&GameID=0022100252&Season=2021-22&flag=1&title=Wiggins%204%27%20Cutting%20Dunk%20Shot%20(8%20PTS)%20(Looney%201%20AST)&sct=plot

- Curry sets a screen on Trent, Wiggins got a dunk.
- Looney is making an extra pass.

WTF is GTJ doing on this play?

thinking about where he wants to take his next step back fadeaway from

[WaltFrazier]

OK, I'm going to address this directly via question:

So because we don't have a magical scorer like Steph, our guys should just... not move off-ball with cuts or backdoor screens and instead rely on... let's see what's left... iso, hero-ball-chucking, and offensive rebounds?

I heard Lou Will's postgame podcast, 10 points or whatever. He made the excellent point that the Warriors did not run a single iso play in that game. The ball and players were in motion the whole time. It seems a no brainer that when you don't have a Steph, or a Harden, or an Embiid who can just catch it in the post and score, that is a better reason to play a moving and screening and cutting offense instead of an iso-heavy offense.

Our players too often catch the ball standing still, then survey the D, then make their next move. There's not enough flow.

[seanbig]

OK, I'm going to address this directly via question:

So because we don't have a magical scorer like Steph, our guys should just... not move off-ball with cuts or backdoor screens and instead rely on... let's see what's left... iso, hero-ball-chucking, and offensive rebounds?

I heard Lou Will's postgame podcast, 10 points or whatever. He made the excellent point that the Warriors did not run a single iso play in that game. The ball and players were in motion the whole time. It seems a no brainer that when you don't have a Steph, or a Harden, or an Embiid who can just catch it in the post and score, that is a better reason to play a moving and screening and cutting offense instead of an iso-heavy offense.

Our players too often catch the ball standing still, then survey the D, then make their next move. There's not enough flow.

My argument is Wiggins who we all wanted to tank for and then loathed due to his horrible bbiq can actually look competent in this system- granted he’s free to chuck since steph is being doubled but if that system can make him look decent - why not steal from Kerr??

I mean 2 years after steph was making fun of nurses jenfy defense of box and one , triangle and two now the warriors are using it

[Yeezus_]

'we don't have the players' or 'we don't have the time' are piss-poor excuses. the warriors are the team that could run the nick nurse offense or the james harden offense and still be successful because steph is steph. but they do go out of their way to play the way they do because it's effective if you have unselfish players that buy in. it's smart basketball.

in comparison, we run a very basic freelance-based offense right now. Got the double DHO, which usually fails to do much of anything and then watching fred/gary go on 1 on 5 pound the ball and chuck 3s/long 2s. maybe a pascal iso, barnes attempting a jumper and then not getting the ball for a multitude of possessions. maybe that worked with norm/kyle/etc because they've all played together for years and had that chemistry down pat. Norm also had a bit more drive to his game, which helped.

if anything, for a team like ours that lacks high-end talent you'd want to create more offensive structure and organisation instead of just free-wheeling and operating off of vibes, nostalgia, transition buckets and seniority in terms of running an nba offense. but that's what we're doing here and i don't quite understand it. i see it as being way too deferential to the guys still left from 2019 instead of doing what's best for the future of the franchise. a lot of selfishness which is antithetical to what masai has been preaching from the jump.

at some point nick nurse has gotta be the head coach instead of a friend even if that has the potential to hurt some feelings.

Tell me how effective the Warriors offense was the last two seasons. Here I will share it with you:

2020-2021 season: 20th
2019-2020 season: 30th

Tell me how successful it was now? You claim regardless of personal and situation they run unselfish schemes and play "smart" basketball. Well I guess it wasn't smart enough.

Let me tell you what makes their offense so special. Steph is having an MVP year, and is probably back to being the best player in the league. Also, Draymond is healthy and is playing tons of minutes again. He is a HUGE reason they are able to do what they do on offense.

[Yeezus_]

Lets put it this way, if it was so easy to play the Warriors style of offense without the personnel, lots of teams in the league would do it lol. These coaches know what they are doing man, even the bad ones.

[Jadoogar]

They have Steph Curry, we don't.

Yea seems like a pretty obvious answer. Even without the ball, Curry draws so much attention, Raptors have no one like that (really no other team does).

I would also add, we don't have Draymond who is one of the best screeners and smartest passers at his position.