Golden State Warriors Film Room: 141-122 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers

1. Opening Play: Low Post Split

This is the first offensive play from the Warriors. You could find it by clicking this link here.

This is a classic play from the Steve Kerr playbook. Stephen Curry passes the ball into Draymond Green in the post. Then D’Angelo Russell and Curry cut off the post.

From here they can go anywhere, but in this case, Curry decided to cut to the basket and Russell used Curry’s gravity to try to get free at the strong-side wing.

Curry is so dangerous everywhere on the court that wherever he goes, there are always at least four eyes on him. Patrick Beverley, who was guarding him, followed him down into the paint. But Landry Shamet also has to come down to tag Curry, to make sure that Curry doesn’t get open on his cut.

As Shamet moves down, this leaves his man, Glenn Robinson III, open. Kevon Looney notices this, so he has to space the floor to make room for the pass to Robinson. He moves up to the top of the key. Curry intelligently stops cutting through and screens Looney’s man.

Looney knocks over Shamet by accident as he cuts through but even if he hadn’t, Shamet would have had to split the difference between Looney and Robinson to guard them both.

But since Shamet fell over, it didn’t matter as Robinson was wide open. Unfortunately, he missed the shot, but that’s just bad luck.

The Warriors coaching staff would have been thrilled to see their opening play work perfectly, even though it’s a classic Golden State Warriors play that they’ve been doing for the last five years.