Golden State Warriors Must Return to Controlled Chaos in Game 4 of NBA Finals
If the Golden State Warriors are going to salvage an NBA Finals that is rapidly slipping through their fingers, if they're going to grab hold of the title that seemed promised to them all season long, they're going to have to let go of something first.
Through three rough Finals contests, the Warriors and regular-season MVP Stephen Curry have been holding on too tight.
They haven't pushed the pace, moved the ball at warp speed or executed offensive sets with the loose confidence that made them unguardable during the year. Critics could rightly point out that such undisciplined play contributed to Golden State's biggest flaws, then and now.
Turnovers and a steady diet of shots that would be considered bad for most shooters were commonplace in the Warriors' 67-win campaign. But the overall product that emerged—an uptempo, end-changing whirlwind punctuated by the occasional face-palming gaffe—created a chaotic environment in which the Warriors thrived.
They dragged opponents into the swirling void and destroyed them. Steal, transition attack, early-shot-clock three-point attempt. Rinse. Repeat.
Those bad shots, when taken with confidence by elite shooters like Curry and Klay Thompson, when taken with a mindset that the Warriors had nothing to lose? Those weren't bad shots at all. They were exactly the ones Golden State wanted.
They've been exceedingly rare (though not extinct) in these Finals.
For the most part, that free-wheeling wildness has given way to structure—structure imposed by a rigid, principled Cleveland Cavaliers defense hellbent on replacing basketball bedlam with plodding predictability.
It's working, and the Warriors now find themselves trailing Cleveland two games to one.
"We've got to have organized chaos, that's what it is," Warriors associate head coach Alvin Gentry told Bleacher Report's Howard Beck after Golden State's 96-91 loss in Game 3. "We've been very successful. We're 80-20 now. So however we got to that point, that's the way we have to play. That's who we are."
But it's not who the Cavs have forced them to become.
Credit Cleveland. Its defense has been masterful, stringing Curry out on the perimeter, staying glued to Thompson beyond the arc and forcing tentative efforts from Golden State's role players.
After posting an offensive rating of 109.7, second best in the league during the regular season, the Warriors have managed just 99.7 points per 100 possessions in the Finals, per NBA.com.
(Aside: It's time to acknowledge Cavs head coach David Blatt knows what he's doing. Pilloried all season, Blatt came up with a Finals scheme the Warriors have yet to solve. LeBron James may be controlling the offense and tempo, but Blatt and his staff should get credit for shutting down the Warriors attack.)
Back to the whole chaos thing.
Curry has had some awful turnovers in this series, so maybe it sounds strange to say he's been too careful or thoughtful, too hesitant to just let things fly.
But you have to understand this about the Warriors: Curry has to play at the very edge of recklessness because that's when he's most dangerous. And as a result, that's when his teammates adopt a similarly relaxed approach. They see Curry dribbling through traffic, hoisting shots off the bounce and whipping passes into tiny openings, and they realize they can play with freedom because their leader is doing the same thing.
They know Curry (when untethered) is good enough to make up for any mistakes they might commit when playing so freely.
When the Warriors don't worry about messing up, they tend to mess up less. Funny how that works.
We've seen everyone tighten up through Curry's struggles.
Draymond Green, nursing a sore back, has lost his three-point shot and, more problematically, his willingness to shoot it.
ESPN.com's Ethan Strauss tweeted: "Draymond Green was 40% on open 3s this season. The 'leave him open' strategy only works if he's not himself. And he's not right now."
Andrew Bogut has barely glanced at the rim on offense, and he saw backup Festus Ezeli log more playing time than he did in Game 3.
Harrison Barnes shot 0-of-8 and turned the ball over three times in Tuesday's loss.
Thompson, the one player whose confidence isn't tied to Curry's performance, has been pressing all series.
All that changes if Curry can rediscover his careless/carefree form, if he can find a way to create a little chaos.
Maybe he'll get some help from an unlikely source: forgotten man David Lee, who was highly effective in a Game 3 cameo.
John Schuhmann of NBA.com noted that the Warriors scored 20 points on 13 pick-and-roll possessions with Lee as the screener in Game 3. The other 40 times the Dubs went with pick-and-roll plays with another screener, they scored just 25 points.
So there you have it: Trust Lee, and hope Curry loosens up.
Problem solved, right? Right?!
Fixing Golden State's issues won't be that easy, because the Cavaliers are adhering to a perfect chaos-inhibiting plan on defense, per Mike Prada of SB Nation: "They're doing it because they've made a decision and carried it out to the extreme. No matter what happens, they won't let Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson beat them. Anyone else? Go right ahead. We dare you."
The Warriors defense has been fine; the Cavs are shooting 39.6 percent from the field and 34.2 percent from long range in the series. It's just that the Warriors haven't turned their frequent defensive stops into the quick counterstrikes they featured so often during the year.
All those easy points have dried up, according to NBA.com.
| Regular Season | 20.9 | 19.7 |
| Through Conference Finals | 21.6 | 16.1 |
| Finals | 11.7 | 13.0 |
To recreate the successful disorder of the regular season, the Warriors must push the ball relentlessly on misses and makes, and they must take some early shot-clock looks in semi-transition. That's who they were this year, and maybe if some of those shots fall, they'll remember they're at their best when things get frenetic.
Maybe that's impossible against a Cavs defense that has won two consecutive games with the same approach. Maybe Curry's fourth-quarter outburst in Game 3 was the product of luck and/or Cleveland relaxing with a 20-point lead.
Either way, Curry and the Warriors must be decisive in the half court and committed to engineering chaos in transition. Otherwise, Golden State's role players won't find the freedom they've been missing.
The catch is that it will never be harder to play recklessly than it is now, trailing 2-1 with a must-win game in Cleveland on Thursday.
Curry and the Warriors played all year like they had nothing to lose, and it worked out to 67 regular-season wins.
Can they play that way when everything hangs in the balance?
The answer to that question will determine whether the Dubs finish the season cradling a trophy or nursing regret.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @gt_hughes.
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