Golden State Warriors: 3 ways to mask D’Angelo Russell’s defensive woes

2. Off-Ball Switches

Pre-switch

This is something that the Warriors used a lot against the Houston Rockets in the conference semi-finals last season. It is a way to stop teams from picking on weaker players in pick-and-rolls. For the Warriors in that series, it was Curry that they were trying to save.

In the future, it may be Russell a bit more.

It starts with opposing ball-handler bringing up the ball. What happens is the offense is trying to get the defense to switch on the ball-screen, so that their good offensive player (James Harden) can isolate on the Warriors’ weak defender (Curry/Russell).

So the idea of this defensive concept is to stop that from happening whilst still being able to defend the pick-and-roll with a switch.

The way they do this is by anticipating a screen with Curry’s man and then switching with another off-ball player before the screen is even set. This avoids even the potential for a mismatch but must be done early so the defense is set up correctly for the incoming pick-and-roll.

In the video above, you can see how Golden State tries to execute the pre-switch for Curry. Nine times out of ten this works for the Warriors, however, this video shows how the Rockets then simply use a double screen in order to get the switch they want.

This won’t always work, although it was effective here.

Mismatch Switch

This concept can also be used to protect players like Curry and Russell in mismatch situations. If a switch does occur which leads to a mismatch (usually on Curry) then the Warriors will try to switch Curry off that player immediately so the offense doesn’t have time to capitalize.

Here you can see Curry gets switched on to numerous bigger players and the Warriors will help him switch off to avoid the mismatch situation. It also has the benefit of conserving Curry’s energy so he can play harder on offense.

Russell will benefit from this too with Green ordering switches for him all over the floor.