Explain One Play: Warriors Triangle-and-2, Box-and-1 and other exotic defenses against Durant and Harden
Plus a trip down painful memory lane
A list of all Explain One Play articles and videos is at The new Explain One Play index.
I received quite a few requests to look at the Warriors defense in the big win against the Brooklyn Nets, 2021.11.16.GSW-BRK. On the broadcast they mentioned triangle-and-two, and some people were wondering what that meant. So I'm going to look at nice sampling of the different defensive schemes that GSW used against Kevin Durant and James Harden’s Nets.
We’ll see box-and-one (and its pro origins in the 2019 NBA Finals), triangle-and-two, and inverted drop coverage with standard weak low man rotation. Co-starring Stephen Curry, Otto Porter Jr, Jonathan Kuminga, Damion Lee, Andre Iguodala, and Gary Payton II. Also with James Harden and Kevin Durant.
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Another great video, hitting your stride this season.
After Kerr mentioned that the rebounding this season "came out of nowhere", I checked out some of the rebounding rates compared to last season. There are a lot of standouts, especially Looney who is easily the most underrated player on the team this season imo.
Looney averaged 9.7 rebounds per 36 in his career before this season, is averaging 13.7 this season.
-Bjelica averaged 7.9 rebounds per 36 in his career before this season, is averaging 10.2 this season.
-Porter Jr averaged 6.7 rebounds per 36 in his career before this season, is averaging 9.4 this season.
-Curry averaged 4.8 rebounds per 36 in his career before this season, is averaging 6.8 this season.
-Wiggins averaged 4.5 rebounds per 36 in his career before this season, is averaging 5.5 this season.
-GP2 obviously has a more limited sample but averaged 6.6 rebounds per 36 in 808 minutes before this season, is averaging 8.4 this season.
-9.6 per 36 is not a career high rebounding rate for Draymond but his highest since 2015-2016.
Probably should have looked at Per 100 Possessions numbers given how fast the Warriors play but didn't think of it until now and don't want to look again.
Someone at my work was asking for a good resource for Warriors X's and O's and another person brought up DNHQ's E1P series on Youtube as one of the first options. Your footprint is growing Apricot