'21 Season E1P Review: Farewell to Kelly Oubre, Eric Paschall and Alen Smailagic

Fighting the universe's box

A list of all Explain One Play articles and videos is at The new Explain One Play index. Plus visit the 2020-21 Season Reviews Guide.

To get us in the mood for next season, I’m going to run some Explain One Play highlights of 2020-21. Many of these previously were subs-only articles, but are now free as a present to our faithful off-season readers.

This compilation is a bit bittersweet as we say farewell to three Warriors.

Kelly Oubre had a rough start. I didn’t want to run videos of him stepping on Steph on relocations or bricking shots, so I held out until he finally had some positive highlights. He stuck with it, and ended up being a contributor.

Eric Paschall was a surprise contributor in the crap 2019-20 season, but never put it together for his sophomore season. He was charismatic and an upright citizen. Good luck, EP.

Alen Smailagic would have been a quiet high risk move which didn’t pan out, if it weren’t for all the attendent hype. We did get that one fun dunk on LeBron though.

Explain One Play: Kelly Oubre Steals The Lakers Game

Kelly Oubre has started thawing out of his season-starting slump and he had his best game of the season so far on the national stage against the Lakers. The Warriors shocked everyone by hanging around in this game, and finally big plays by Kelly Oubre were a key part of the turning point of the game in crunch time. Let’s focus on one play, which was a play from the wild ending of the Bulls game, and how Coach Steve Kerr altered it to feature Kelly Oubre. Co-starring a sloppy LeBron James, a distracted Anthony Davis, Kevon Looney, Andrew Wiggins, and Stephen Curry.

From the GSW-LAL 2021.01.19.

Explain One Play Reaction: Iverson Cut for a Kelly Oubre Alley-Oop Dunk

Kelly Oubre had a career high 40 points against the tired looking Dallas Mavericks in the 2021.02.04 GSW-DAL game.

I managed to miss the third quarter, so I did a live reaction video and here is one memorable sequence, which had the Warriors run the same play twice, once to get Oubre a flying alley-oop dunk and again for an Andrew Wiggins lay-up.

Co-starring Stephen Curry as the Superstar Screener, Draymond Green as the Wise Playmaker, Juan Toscano-Anderson running the play correctly, which is not to be taken for granted this year.

Explain One Oubre: Kelly Dunks LaMelo Ball and the Hornets 6 Times in the 1st Quarter

By popular demand, we're going to have a look at Kelly Oubre's incredible six dunks in the first quarter of the recent Hornets game. That's gotta be close to a record.

We look in detail how Stephen Curry’s offensive threat warped the defense which allowed Kelly Oubre to make the excellent off-ball cuts to get free for Draymond Green’s pinpoint passes. Co-starring an increasingly frustrated LaMelo Ball.

2021.02.24. CHA-GSW.

Explain One Play - Stephen Curry and Eric Paschall Fake A Handoff

The Clippers were blitzing and trapping Stephen Curry all game. This HORNS Handoff Fake play turned the tables on the Clipper pressure and sprung Eric Paschall free to attack the basket.

But even finishing a 4-on-3 is no joke with the Clippers free to leave Draymond Green to help. What can young EP do?

From the 2021.1.6 LAC-GSW game.

Explain One Play: Alen Smailagic Dunks on LeBron

The Warriors kept the Serbian youngster Alen Smailagic a secret until they could draft him. On Feb 8 2020, the mysterious rookie made a splashy national TV debut against LeBron James and the Lakers. This is a video analysis of how Smiley threw down an enormous dunk on LeBron James, with a look at Draymond Green running similar plays with Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.

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