The Golden State Warriors aid Curry on his quest for finals MVP

Golden State Warriors /

Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry is on his quest for his first finals MVP award. It will take the help of his team mates for him to secure the award.

The Golden State Warriors begin their fourth showdown in the NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers tonight.

They are coming off a dogfight in the Western Conference Finals against the Rockets – a seven-game series that was full of peaks and valleys. Joy and frustration. Failure and then ultimate success. It was a bumpier road than most Warriors fans would have liked. Certainly bumpier than last year.

Kevin Durant struggled late – his first true growing pains since joining the Warriors. Andre Iguodala injured his knee and watched the final four games from a padded folding chair. Even Stephen Curry, the two-time MVP who was coming off a sprained MCL injury, struggled to find his rhythm in the opening games.

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But in Game three against the Rockets, Curry found that rhythm, harnessed that frantic and joyous play and reminded the world of one thing.

“This is my f*cking house!” he screamed after a baseline drive to highlight yet another incendiary third quarter at Oracle Arena.

Rick Barry, Sleepy Floyd, Run TMC, J-Rich, Baron Davis – all legendary Warriors. But don’t get it twisted, this is the house that Stephen Curry built.

And as the Warriors near the end of their days at 7000 Coliseum Way – and likely their historic four consecutive matchups against LeBron James – there is one expedition that remains uncharted: the quest for Stephen Curry and the Finals MVP.

In 2015, Iguodala captured the award after sliding into the starting lineup and locking down LeBron James in the final three games in what was truly the birth of the death lineup that has come to exemplify the Warriors life-sucking play.

In 2016, well…we’ll just say it didn’t go as planned. Curry didn’t win that MVP trophy either.

In 2017, Curry dominated and nearly averaged a *cough* honest *cough* triple double in the Finals, but he was outshined by his new running mate – the 7-foot assassin named Kevin Durant. KD averaged a godly 35 points per game and it was his enormous hands that clutched the coveted Bill Russell Finals MVP Trophy as the Warriors celebrated their revengeful championship.

Curry couldn’t care less. He’s the best player to never have an ego – at least outwardly. But Curry is human (wait, is he?). He’s a competitor. And he’ll never say a word about it, but he wants that trophy. Of course, he does. Which is why these Finals are important for reasons beyond leading another parade through Oakland.

Because this is Stephen Curry’s house, damn it.

But the Cavaliers are cognizant of this ownership and are acutely aware of his ability to erupt at any moment and put the game beyond reach. Which is why they have developed a semi-functional approach to stopping Golden State’s most lethal player.

Because the best way for the Cavs to prevent Curry from lighting them up is to prevent him from even touching the ball, and when he inevitably does, throwing bigger, quicker bodies on him.

“He’s a tough player,” head coach Tyronn Lue said. “He’s gonna take a lot of shots, he’s gonna make some tough shots, we understand that. But we want to be physical and just stay on his body. Just being alert and taking away those easy baskets like – losing him in transition or we turn our head, he moves and gets a wide open three or an offensive rebound.”

Curry is unstoppable – Lue hints at this – but he’s not necessarily ungaurdable. If the Cavs want to keep him as disengaged as possible, they’ll have to take away the “normal” aspects of his play and concede the impossibilities that inevitably come with Steph Curry.

This is a game plan we’ve seen before. In the Christmas Day Game in the 2016/2017 season, Curry was bombarded with multiple bodies, constant face-guarding and combined with Kevin Durant hero-ball, Curry became a nonfactor. This is coach Lue’s idyllic strategy.

Don’t let Curry get the easy ones. Take him out of rhythm, take him out of the game.

But the Warriors know this too – there’s another coach on the other side of the chess-board. And though Kerr is often criticized for running Curry too much off the ball, the Warriors must exact a game plan that allows him to play successfully off the ball.

Successfully is the key word here because we’ve seen what happens when Curry isn’t active off-ball. We saw it in the Western Conference Finals. When Curry defers, and the game becomes the Kevin Durant show, Curry loses his rhythm. And that is likely the Warriors’ only Achilles heel.

So, the scheme then becomes designing the offense to allow Curry to flourish when he isn’t touching the Spalding (“Elevator Play” anyone?). Which begins with the ball in the hands of the Warriors other trusted decision makers.

This is tough with Iguodala out for at least Game one – he is said to be making progress, but an exact return is still unknown. Meaning that Draymond Green will be running the offense more and Shaun Livingston’s playing time will increase. Expect the Warriors to experiment with Durant running the O as well, and if he can prove that he can let the offense unfold before he defers to getting a shot for himself, the Warriors will be in good shape.

We already know the Warriors are crafty at curating an offense that emphasizes off-ball play – Thompson is probably the best in the league at it. When he scored 60 points against the Pacers last season in three quarters, he touched the ball for only 90 seconds and only dribbled 11 times.

Some fans may not realize it, but Curry is equally adept at this – it’s just not as noticeable because he runs the point, and the ball is almost always in his hands. The key is for the Warriors to structure their offense to allow Klay and Curry to both play successfully without the ball. You mix this with the deadly KD/Curry pick-and-roll and the Cavaliers really stand no chance.

The Warriors rarely deferred to this tactic in 2017 and even in the 2018 season it wasn’t a focal point of their offense. But in the playoffs, the game simplifies – the Rockets are a prime example of this. Their offense in the Western Conference Finals was mirrored in every game. Which is why last year in the Finals, Warriors fans finally got what they had been begging for since opening night: the deadliest PnR in NBA history.

“We’ve been operating as a tandem for a minute,” Curry said in an interview last Monday. “We had that going in the Finals when we ran 800 million pick-and-rolls.”

When Durant and Curry play off each other naturally, the barrage is overwhelming. It’s why the Warriors won the championship in a gentleman’s sweep last year. Their attack was unrelenting. It was unfair.

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If they can balance these two attacks – the dreaded pick-and-roll and successfully running Curry off-ball – the Warriors put themselves in position to dominate the Cavs for the second year in a row. Coach Lue’s schemes won’t matter.

As Stephen Curry goes, so do the Warriors. This series it won’t always begin with the ball in his hands, it won’t necessarily end in them either.

His ten digits become the middle-men, the nylon becomes the medium and this Warriors-Cavaliers historic showdown comes to a storybook ending with each of those hands holding its own piece of cherished NBA hardware.

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