Steve Kerr Facing Toughest Test Yet as Golden State Warriors Head Coach
Like most 67-win campaigns, the Golden State Warriors' brilliant 2014-15 season never gave them the opportunity to get familiar with adversity.
Down 2-1 to the Memphis Grizzlies ahead of a pivotal Game 4, head coach Steve Kerr's Warriors will get their chance now.
Kerr called his team's current predicament its "moment of truth," and that's accurate in more ways than one.
The Stakes
Practically, falling behind 3-1 to the Grizzlies would be a disaster. According to WhoWins.com, there have been 224 seven-game NBA series in which one team dug a 3-1 hole. The trailing team has climbed out of that chasm just eight times.
Losing Game 4 would give the Warriors a 3.6 percent chance of winning the series, according to historical precedent.
And as the Dubs peer over the precipice of massive postseason disappointment, the other aspect of their "moment of truth" becomes clear.
Kerr and the Warriors have to trust in what they've done to this point, even though none of it seems to be working anymore.
It seems like eons ago now, but if we flash back to the Warriors' world as it existed after they took a 1-0 lead against the Grizzlies, everything was going to plan. They'd bulldozed the regular season, racking up a net rating that screamed "championship lock" behind two elite shooters and the best defense in the league.
Nobody played faster, nobody crushed opponents by a larger margin and nobody kicked back and rested during the fourth quarters of blowout victories like the Dubs.
Game 1 felt like a regular-season contest for the Warriors, which is to say they proved their superiority early and were never legitimately threatened.
System Failure?
The threes didn't fall against Memphis in Games 2 and 3, though. Stephen Curry made just 4-of-21 from deep in those two losses—a stat made more troubling by the fact that so many misses came on open looks.
Per Ethan Strauss of ESPN.com, Golden State isn't making the shots it made all year:
Memphis is wearing the Warriors shooters out, staying glued to them around screens and denying the high handoffs Golden State prefers. Curry and Klay Thompson are finding daylight—but only after sprinting around in circles and wrestling with defenders to get there.
Even when Curry and Thompson lose their Memphis defenders, fatigue is draped all over them.
Defensively, the Warriors have performed adequately. The Grizzlies have made just 13 threes in the series and haven't shot better than 45.2 percent from the field in any game so far. Golden State has made mistakes, though—sometimes overhelping, consistently allowing deep duck-ins from Memphis bigs and generally lacking focus in transition—and combined with the offensive issues, a 2-1 hole is a just result.
Which brings us back to the present, where the Warriors will return to Oakland facing elimination if Game 4 proceeds like Games 2 and 3.
So, in this situation, with the potential for a historically disappointing end to a fantastic season looming, with everything that once worked now failing, what does Kerr do? How must his team meet its moment of truth?
Just like it faced those walkover, breeze-through contests during the regular season.
Trim the Fat
This is a suggestion that borders on catastrophic stubbornness, on "doing the same stupid thing and expecting different results" insanity. Because it admittedly feels insane to suggest Golden State must approach Game 4 like it approached so many less-significant games this year.
There are reasons to trust the process.
If you look at the lineup data, Golden State's starting five is still posting a net rating of plus-8.7 points per 100 possessions in this series, per NBA.com. And its smaller, speedier unit (in which Andre Iguodala plays instead of Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green slots in at center) has been dominant, posting a net rating of plus-25.3 points per 100 possessions.
That latter group gave the Grizzlies real second-half problems in Game 3 with its doubles and general chaos creation on defense. That unit, which was monstrously effective all year, will almost certainly be utilized more in Game 4.
Those numbers suggest Kerr's best option might be to shrink the rotation. No more Leandro Barbosa, no more Shaun Livingston and no more Festus Ezeli.
With Marreese Speights' strained calf keeping him out of Game 4, some of Kerr's lineup trimming has already been done for him.
If there's a team positioned to cut out most of its bench at this late stage of the year, it's the Warriors. All those blowouts kept everyone's minutes down, and the big conference cushion afforded veterans plenty of games off.
Curry led the team with a paltry 32.7 minutes per game, while only Green and Thompson joined him above the 30-minute plateau.
What was Golden State saving everyone's legs for if not a campaign-defining moment like this?
The New, Old Plan
Playing the right guys is one thing. Getting them to believe in a strategy that hasn't worked lately is another.
Memphis has taken away the easy looks Golden State uses to build momentum, forcing an offense that prefers a monsoon to settle for a few intermittent showers.
The Grizzlies have strung Curry out on every pick-and-roll, routinely keeping two defenders glued to him until he gives up the ball. Curry has exacerbated the problem by holding onto the rock for too long, hunting for a Memphis lapse and an open shot.
Memphis hasn't lapsed, and overdribbling against this particular defense has been a massive mistake.
Curry must give the ball up quickly when doubled, and he should know how to do that because smart opponents attack him this way all the time.
The best counter is kicking the ball to the screener quickly and trusting that screener (almost always Green) to either shoot or attack decisively.
"We've faced that all year in terms of people jumping out on Steph on the high screens and double-teaming him," Kerr told Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News. "What we've done all year is move the ball on and get it out of Steph's hands and then start the defensive rotations that have to come when you have two on the ball."
The Warriors need only look to the first quarter of Game 1 for evidence of that simple, battle-tested strategy.
Green hit three triples in that opening period as part of an early blitz that put the game out of reach.
Staying the Course
Kerr and the Warriors must believe in the tactics that worked for them all year, even if the currently dire straits make it difficult.
Now isn't the time to counsel big changes, though the temptation is there, especially with Kerr taking shots from his former mentor, Phil Jackson, typos and all:
If the Warriors are going to turn this series around, if they're going to avert disaster, they'll have to do it by being who they are.
That's the truth, and at the moment, it's terrifying.
