Golden State Warriors Desperately Need Stephen Curry to Rediscover MVP Status
Stephen Curry carried the Golden State Warriors to a lot of places this season: a franchise-record wins total, the top overall seed in the NBA playoffs, the head of the league's pace-and-space revolution.
But the old-school Memphis Grizzlies have rerouted the Warriors' path to the promised land. And Curry has looked helpless to get them back on track since starting his week by collecting the MVP award.
His volume production hasn't been great, but it hasn't exactly disappeared. He paced the Warriors in points for the fifth straight game on Saturday with 23. He added six assists to his stat line in Game 3, a number he's reached in six of their seven postseason outings.
But the otherworldly efficiency that powered him to the Maurice Podoloff Trophy has vanished. He's shooting just 23-of-58 for the series (39.7 percent). He's misfired on 17 of his last 21 three-point attempts. And he nearly canceled out those six dimes with four turnovers during Golden State's 99-89 road loss in Game 3.
He made his first shot of the evening on a transition layup and then watched his night crumble into his personal "Grindhouse of Horrors." The Dubs, who have followed his lead every step of this season, were outscored by six points during his 40 minutes of action—a number that could have been significantly worse if the officials hadn't started Golden State's parade to the foul line in the final period.
The Warriors finished with 28 free-throw attempts after taking just 10 through the first three quarters. That's how Golden State nearly erased a Memphis lead that ballooned to 19 points on a Zach Randolph step-back jumper with 10:38 remaining.
But while Marreese Speights (who left in the fourth with a strained calf), Harrison Barnes and Andre Iguodala kept the Warriors climbing a daunting hill, Curry couldn't muster up the magic to help them over the hump. His only points of the period came on two free throws, and his final assist of the night came at the 4:47 mark of the third.
After Barnes' layup trimmed Golden State's deficit to four with a little over three minutes remaining, Curry lost track of Grizzlies guard Courtney Lee, who drilled what was effectively a coffin-closing triple.
For all of Curry's missteps—there may have been too many to count—that blown assignment served as Golden State's back-breaker.
To make matters worse, as basketball analyst Nate Duncan observed, there was no valid reason for Curry to lose track of a player who's hitting 50 percent from distance during the playoffs:
This loss, of course, didn't come down to one play.
The Dubs left 10 points at the free-throw line: nine on misses; the other on Draymond Green's costly lane violation in the closing minutes. They committed 17 turnovers that led to 22 Grizzlies points. They were outrebounded by five (44-39), outscored in the paint by 14 (46-32) and outshot from nearly every area on the floor.
Golden State collectively shouldered this loss. But Curry, as the team's unquestioned leader, holds a lot of the blame for letting the Warriors play so poorly that no one recognized him or his squad. ESPN's Ryen Russillo, sportswriter Jimmy Spencer and the Twitter feed Fast Break provided performance assessments:
The Grizzlies had a lot to do with that.
They've been determined to force someone other than Curry to beat them. Mike Conley, Tony Allen and Courtney Lee have flown around the perimeter to take away three-point shots. Memphis' bigs have harassed Curry on pick-and-rolls to get the ball out of his hands.
When he's looked for his sweet spots on the floor, he's found them already occupied by Grizzlies defenders, as ESPN's Ethan Sherwood Strauss noted:
There's some temptation to blame Golden State's struggles on an inability to hit shots. On some level, that's true. The Warriors led all teams during the regular season with a 39.8 three-point percentage. That conversion rate has tumbled to 23.1 over their last two outings.
But it's not as simple as that would sound.
The Warriors are getting some open looks, but they're working incredibly hard (at both ends of the floor) to find them. As noted NBA gambler Harlabos Voulgaris observed, their legs seem to lack some lift when they're letting it fly:
"GSW missing a ton of open 3s, but having to work so hard on both ends, feels like fatigue is a factor in addition to random variance
— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) May 10, 2015"
There's also some added pressure on those shots, and it's not only the kind that comes from Golden State playing the role of hunter for the first time in decades.
Warriors gunners know that clean looks are going to come few and far between against a defense with this much discipline. So there's a rush to capitalize on the ones that do appear and a need to knock all of those down.
That has pulled Golden State away from doing what it does best. This team thrived on ball movement under first-year coach Steve Kerr. But the players aren't trusting the offense to find shots anymore.
The Warriors averaged 315.8 passes per game during the regular season. They only made 274 in Game 2 and just 256 on Saturday. They've only assisted on 57.1 percent over their makes these last two games, after ranking second during the year at 65.9.
Following the loss in Game 2, Kerr said his team "lost our poise," via CSNBayArea.com's Monte Poole. "We were too emotional. We were too quick with our intention to score. Instead of just moving the ball and setting good screens, everyone was trying to do everything frantically on their own."
The bad kind of hero ball returned Saturday. And it left Curry sounding like a broken record during his postgame comments (via the San Jose Mercury News' Fast Break blog):
The Warriors won't try to reinvent the wheel in Monday's Game 4.
They found some success playing with controlled aggression, forcing the pace without losing control. Their small-ball look proved problematic for Memphis down the stretch, and Golden State's ability to maintain a pulse late in this game could give it some momentum going forward.
But Curry has to play better for the Warriors to survive this series. And he knows it, as his comments illustrate (via the San Jose Mercury News' Fast Break blog):
Golden State has the MVP winner on its side. Now, it just needs the MVP to re-enter this series.
Curry has the talent to do it. He blitzed the Grizzlies for 24 points on 47.4 percent shooting (42.9 percent from deep) and eight assists per game during their three regular-season meetings.
The Dubs need his shooting to break apart this defense, and his playmaking to send a spark through the supporting cast. It's the same role he masterfully played up to this point.
But the playoffs are clearly a different beast of their own.
The type that won't be tamed without Curry putting this team on his back and carrying it to a place far more rewarding than anywhere else it's been so far.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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