'21 Season E1P Review: Steph Curry early season, The Force Awakens

The vultures circled but had to leave starving, heh heh

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.

Explain One Play: Stephen Curry Fakes Out The Bulls

An E1P from the very beginning of the season, from the 2020.12.27 GSW-CHI game.

Stephen Curry saved a game that looked lost with a couple of key fakes down the stretch. Watch how he got his defender flying in every direction to score crucial points down the stretch. Co-starring a hustling Damion Lee, a composed Andrew Wiggins, Kelly Oubre Jr and a body-slamming Kevon Looney.

Explain One Play: Stephen Curry In A World Without Space

Let’s look at the Warriors offense trying to gel as they play a Blazers team that’s not afraid to pack the paint. They run some pick and rolls as well as an advanced three-man version of Steve Kerr’s split cuts. Co-starring Kelly Oubre Jr, Draymond Green, James Wiseman, Damion Lee, Eric Paschall, Juan Toscano-Anderson and Stephen Curry.

From the 2021.1.1 POR-GSW game.

Explain One Play: Stephen Curry in Automatic Split Cuts

More live reaction video from the 2021.1.4 SAC-GSW game. We look at two split cuts, automatic plays in the Kerr offense, and how Stephen Curry both gets and receives screens in the action. The Twitter complaint about Steph screening for role players happens to be true. And I think a good thing. Co-starring Kent Bazemore and Kevon Looney.

Explain One Game: Did the Box and One janky defense solve Steph? Not so fast.

Stephen Curry has been facing increased use of the Box and One defense, which he calls the “janky defense”. Solving this consistently is going to be a major theme of the near future.

This first became an issue after the Pacers shut down the Warriors in crunch time to steal away the IND-GSW game on 2021.01.12.

I did a breakdown of the last offensive possessions to see how badly the Box-and-One was messing up the Warriors. The answer in short is that the defensive results are good, but the Warriors missed very makable shots, so there is a lot to build on for Operation UnBox.