Explain One Play: Warriors Triangle-and-2, Box-and-1 and other exotic defenses against Durant and Harden
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
Explain One Play: Warriors Triangle-and-2, Box-and-1 and other exotic defenses against Durant and Harden
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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Oh my. Brilliant work. I am so grateful to learn and understand more about the game.
I have a good feeling about this mighty morphing defense that we have... it feels fresh and something the rest of the league is not yet prepared to go against nor emulate (similar to the ball movement, 3s, and pace of the '14-16 teams; see Abaddon's theringer.com link below).
These man-zone hybrid defenses really punish top-heavy teams that rely on 1 or 2 creators and 3-4 guys spotting up. And being able to switch defenses on-the-fly just to throw off the opposing offense for a handful of possessions per game is pretty huge, in addition to not giving them a static defense to fine-tune their attack in-game.