TronoWrappers wrote:Couldn't agree more regarding Draymond. Some teams sag off him expecting to bait him into shooting 3's. He's not going to do that, he's too smart and knows his limitations. You have to treat him like Rondo or Simmons: pressure him and make him uncomfortable so he can't make the easy pass.
From my armchair position, I would start the series out like this:
Lowry/Siakam - Iguadala
Green - Steph
Kawhi - Draymond
Siakam/Lowry - Klay
Gasol - Cousins/Bogut
I can see Iggy taking advantage of Lowry on the offensive rebounds so swapping him with Siakam would help nullify that. Really worried about Gasol switching onto Curry in the PnR, Nurse is going to have to get creative there.
The Curry/Klay/Iggy matchups might need a bit of trial and error to figure out. I think the main considerations are 1) challenging Curry in the P&R and 2) the ability to stay with Klay off the ball.
I think a key with guarding Curry is to not get caught up in him being the best shooter of all time where you over commit to trying to prevent 3s. You have to guard him the way you would any point guard that is a serious 3 point threat but can also score driving the ball. If you try too hard to prevent him from shooting 3s you are going to compromise your defense and Curry is excellent at taking advantage of that; moreover, he makes well defended 3s at an above average clip so taking him from a 40% chance of making it to 37% isn't worth the risk of giving up a 100% open layup or dunk.
What we will need to do is throw a lot of defensive looks at Curry to be unpredictable. That would help limit Gasol getting switched onto Curry with any regularity. Fortunately we have shown that we can defend the P&R in a variety of ways, which is a credit to Nurse as he practiced them in the regular season.
Klay takes the most shots off screens in the league and is one of the best at making them. During these playoffs we have had to face a few guys who are very good at shooting coming off screens - Ross and Fournier with Orlando and JJ Redick with the Sixers. Hopefully that will give the team some insights into how best to defend someone like Klay. I think he has more size (height and wt) than any of those other guys which might mean someone like Lowry or Fred chasing him isn't going to work very well, but who knows.
