Golden State Warriors: Ball movement will be key in deciding the WCF

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The Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets have played two games of the western conference finals. What have we learned from these two very different games?,

The Golden State Warriors have officially concluded their two game road trip to Texas, and the results have been mixed. With the series now tied at one game a piece for each team, the Warriors managed to steal home court advantage with a game one victory, but then suffered an ugly loss in the next meeting.

Overall, a split is a favorable outcome for a road team, but the Golden State Warriors are expected to be better. For a team of this caliber, anything short of a sweep is under achieving. Albeit one would like to see the team be up two games to none at the moment, dropping one game on the road to the best regular season team in the league is nothing to be necessarily ashamed of.

These two games were essentially polar opposites of one another. Game one saw the Warriors stifle the high powered Rockets’ offense and win handily, while game two saw the Rockets accomplish a very similar feat against their visiting opponents.

After game one, it seemed that Houston had no chance of dethroning the reigning NBA champions, but that is no longer as much of a certainty as we once thought.

But what led to these games concluding in such different manners? The answer to this is much more simple than one might think.

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Moving the ball is kind of important, as one might assume.

While this is a very obvious point, it is the most important to keep in mind while examining the outcome of the series thus far.

In game one of the series, the Houston Rockets played a very early-2000’s style of basketball. The gameplan was essentially to give James Harden the ball every play and everyone else get out of the way and be prepared to shoot when passed the ball.

This, of course, is not a style of basketball that can beat the Golden State Warriors, and the outcome of the game was reflective of that. While James Harden put up a phenomenal performance, scoring 41 points to go along with seven assists, the rest of the team’s play was stagnant.

Since the team’s offense was so centered around Harden in this game, the rest of the team had no chance to get comfortable in the flow of the game. The team’s point distribution was awful.

Harden and Chris Paul were responsible for 64 of the teams 106 points, with the other starters scoring eight, one, and twelve.

This problem was completely erased for the Rockets in game two. The team moved the ball around much more effectively, leading to a more even point distribution. Five players scored over 15 points, with five other players putting points on the board as well.

It is no coincidence that this is the game that the team managed to beat the Warriors. The reasoning for the Warriors losing this game are much like those that applied to the Rockets’ loss in game one.

This time, it was the Warriors who did not distribute the ball well. In both games, the Warriors focused more on attacking matchups then moving the ball around as they typically do. This mostly included Stephen Curry attacking centers on switches, and Kevin Durant attacking smaller guards on switches.

This gameplan worked in game one for two reasons. The team was able to win with their defense, effectively shutting down the Rockets’ offense outside of James Harden, and the Warriors not named Durant or Curry were knocking down their open shots when the opportunity was given.

These things did not happen in game two.

The Warriors’ defense was less effective on the more ball movement-centric offense that Houston deployed in game two, and besides Kevin Durant, the Warriors shot very poorly.

Kevin Durant continued to abuse mismatches and score efficiently, but Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry did not replicate their production from game one.

Klay Thompson went from 28 points on 50% shooting in game one to eight points on 27.3% shooting in game two. Meanwhile Stephen Curry went from 18 points on 53% shooting to 16 points on just 36% shooting.

This dramatic loss of efficiency from the team’s starting guards was the difference between a win and a loss for the team. Centering the team’s offense around attacking mismatched can work, but only if the team gets effective scoring from it’s back court.

If the splash brothers continue to perform this poorly in game two, expect to see the team move away from this isolation against matchups style of offense and more towards their traditional, ball movement heavy offense– assuming they haven’t already decided to do so for game three.

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Based on the two games we have seen thus far in the series one thing is clear. Ball movement and even point distribution is the key to either team’s success in this series.

Both team’s are surely aware of these trends, it is how they choose to implement them into their game that will decide how this series turns out.

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