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So, the reason he started Porter was because that lineup in Game 3 was awesome. However, in Game 4, it had a NetRtg of -31.9 in 9 mins. I imagine he goes back to regular 5 (which had been destroying Cs, and did so again in Game 4)

https://twitter.com/bballbreakdown/status/1536139969579798528

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Stupid draft shit but I think this guy Jake Laravia would be a nice pick for the Warriors. High BBIQ stretch 4 type, kinda Porter-y.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z7ME0g8Pm0

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Jun 13, 2022·edited Jun 13, 2022

Super “insightful”analysis here: https://www.celticsblog.com/2022/6/12/23163951/some-good-news-and-some-bad-news-game-4-nba-finals-boston-celtics-golden-state-warriors-steph-curry

Summary: the Celtics are better than the Warriors. The Celtics therefore just need to play better than the Warriors and they will win.

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Jun 12, 2022·edited Jun 12, 2022

OPJ is officially “questionable” for Monday.

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Jun 12, 2022·edited Jun 12, 2022

Jaylen Brown on how they plan to defend Steph Curry: “Steph Curry is really good, if you guys haven't noticed," Brown said. "He can shoot the ball unbelievably, even watching it, playing against it and even in the Finals I feel like he's taken it up a notch a little bit. He had a hell of a performance in Game 4 and we gotta respond to that, we gotta do even more of a better job and we've gotta be even more focused on the details."

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Rewatching the game (Q1):

- RW seems to be biggest (pun intended) thing standing in our way to championship. We still haven't figured out a way to play him off the court.

- OPJ looked slow/not locked in going against RW at start. Hopefully he can feed off Dubs' crowd.

- Klay coming off injuries and not being able to defend Brown has scrambled things. Normally Dray will take on RW and Dray has shown that he can nullify other team's big to a certain extent on that team's offense. But he needs to be on Brown

- Poole was able to score on RW under basket by bumping into his body with force and then going up for a layup. Dont know if it was a fluke or may be he is figuring things out.

- We looked pretty much on a string on D but for one miscommunication between Steph and Klay and on another possession, GP2 getting lossing his man and then trying to recover instead of switch

- The 3 guard small lineup w/ OPJ and Loon got killed. Hopefully we don't see that. Not sure if that lineup has ever played

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Interesting stats:

https://i.redd.it/ksn4g7z9d8591.jpg

Celtics halfcourt offensive rating is better than the Warriors

Warriors transition offensive rating is waaaaaay better than the Celtics

Celtics have been hitting corner 3s at a high percentage than the Warriors

Celtics have more rebounds, assists, and turnovers

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Jun 12, 2022Liked by Duby Dub Dubs

https://www.si.com/.amp/nba/2022/06/12/stephen-curry-2015-nba-finals-mvp-voters-roundtable

I suppose it’s not hard to believe that these morons wouldn’t want to admit that they were wrong 7 years ago. But it’s amazing how even today they don’t understand all the ways Steph impacted that series and every one that he has played in ever since. Just another reason that the FMVP discussion is a joke.

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Jun 12, 2022·edited Jun 12, 2022Liked by Eric Apricot, Duby Dub Dubs

I've been thinking a lot about how Steph is guarded, sparked by Thinking Basketball's excellent video "Why no one guards Steph Curry this way": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6_vawdzRok (as always a great video). And I keep coming back to Game One of the 2018-2019 NBA playoffs versus the Clippers.

The Warriors were coming off of their second of two straight dominant championships and into the third and what would be final year of the Kevin Durant era. As we all know, in the Steve Kerr era teams have largely chosen to defend Steph with doubles/blitzes/traps and try to get the ball out of his hands. The addition of Durant made that choice untenable because it opened up the floor for his prodigious talents in the open floor. KD was coming off his second straight NBA Finals MVP trophy, a series in which he scored 28.8 PPG shooting 53% from the field and 41% from three and NINETY-SIX percent from the free throw line. He also racked up just under 11 rebounds a game, 7.5 assists per game to only 2.3 turnovers, and 2.3 blocks per game. Truly a MONSTER series.

The Clippers in G1 of the following postseason didn't generally employ that traditional defense against Steph. In some ways it is reminiscent of how the Celtics are defending Steph this series. His performance in that game is arguably one of his best postseason performances: 38 points in 37 minutes on only 16 (!) attempts from the field; 8 of 12 from three (11 of 16 overall) and 8 of 9 from the line for a sizzling 93.8% TS, 15 (!) rebounds (3 offensive), and seven assists (to four turnovers). By inpredictable.com's Win Probability Added metric http://stats.inpredictable.com/nba/wpBox.php?season=2018&month=04&date=2019-04-13&gid=0041800141 his +30.3% was top 10 in his career, even though the game was somewhat of a blowout (WPA weighs stats acquired with larger leads lower). My blended metric of box score stats and WPA places it comfortably first. (My metric doesn't include things like opponent difficulty or percentage of load carried by the player, which are the biggest two reasons I would personally rate this most recent game significantly higher).

Although highlights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4-76CZNEhw are often misleading because they only show top plays for a player, and a good amount of Steph's impact was in transition and not against a set defense, you can see elements of the drop coverage here, executed much more poorly than Boston is doing now. Steph absolutely shredded the Clippers and you can see from the box score and advanced stats how big of an impact he had https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201904130GSW.html, with an outrageous 158 ORtg and 98 DRtg for the game. Durant's impact was limited to a still excellent and efficient 23 points on his 16 shots with an ORtg of 114 and DRtg of 95.

After this game, the Clippers completely revamped their defense to employ the usual Stephen Curry creepy twins defense employing traps, blitzes, and double-teams. That's right, it took ONE GAME of Steph going nuclear for the Clippers to decide they should focus their attention on him and let Durant cook. The Warriors would lose Game 2 before adjusting and going 3-1 the rest of the series to win in a hard-fought six games. The rest of the series, Steph averaged 22 points on 46% shooting from the field and 44% from three. KD averaged 37.4 PPG on 58% shooting from the field on almost 21 attempts a game and just under 40% from three.

Nowadays, it is probably better (despite cries from the media) for Boston to continue to guard Steph most of the time with the same defense they've been employing. The effectiveness of the other Warriors in efficiently scoring the ball when Steph's gravity gives them 4-3 opportunities more than makes up for limiting the offense Steph can generate by himself. Without that gravity, when Steph is guarded as he has been in this series, the Warriors really struggle to generate enough offense to fill in the margins and win the game, as we have seen in the first four games.

If I were Boston, I'd try mixing it up a little more... like they did at the end of Game 4... but they would have to execute much better than they did on that play. I think it's probably difficult to mix up the defenses too much at this stage of the game so I don't know if we'll see much of that at all. The Warriors need to find ways to be more effective when Steph is guarded with drop coverage and in particular have to find a way to get Draymond more involved than he has been. His regression offensively (which Boston's coverage has a lot to do with) has really demanded Steph play ridiculously to get to this point. If the Warriors can hit some of those open threes they've been getting, that would help a lot.

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You ever sit in a thread looking for new comments, wondering where everyone is at, and then finally realize you haven't refreshed the main page in a while and missed a new thread?

Yep, that's me.

Kind of reminds me of college, when I'd go to class and there would be one other dufus besides me who hadn't got the 'class is cancelled' memo.

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Jun 12, 2022Liked by Duby Dub Dubs

Flame me if you must but I’m all in on the rookies riding (non-garbage time) pine these finals. While I think Moody could be helpful on defense for very brief actions, GP2 is almost always going to be a better option. And Kuminga doesn’t have the system down enough for him to keep up on either end of the court. Hopefully they are motivated and paying attention because they are going to have to earn the right to be in the rotation in future playoffs. I think they will - I’m very optimistic about these two. But they play if they can contribute.

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Am I the only one who is getting really annoyed at all the "Curry has no help around him, Draymond is unplayable, the Celtics are just more talented" takes?

Curry is incredible. No doubt. Like, one of the best ever. But it's not like the rest of the team is scrubs. It hasn't been the best series for several of the other Warriors (including Draymond, Klay and Poole) but that could all change tomorrow (and hopefully will!)

Any claiming the Warriors are just untalented outside of Steph clearly hasn't watched them play prior to the finals.

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Jun 12, 2022Liked by Duby Dub Dubs

Good reminder from one of the posts about Dray and technical fouls. He hasn’t gotten any more since Game 2 so he’s still at four. So he’ll be good to go even if he picks up one in each of games 5,6, and 7. Also still at 2 flagrant foul points.

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Jun 12, 2022Liked by Duby Dub Dubs

I’m in awe of all the comments especially during Game 4. I was transfixed and could not multitask no way. I did notice the look in Steph’s eyes. Still not over it.

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Anyone know of a ref who was fired from the NBA for having a clear bias or making too many reversed or bad calls demonstrated in the post game report?

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