The Warriors look nothing like the team that won three titles — and you shouldn’t expect that to change before Game 5
OAKLAND — Who are these guys?
Because they don’t look anything like the Warriors.
Identity is a vital part of success in sports, in life. And the Warriors have lost theirs. And, frankly, it’s probably too late for Golden State to find it again.
These Raptors have broken them.
After going being 3-1 Friday night, the Warriors said all the “right” things. They believe they can do something that’s only been done once before, they’ve been through it all, one game at a time — you know the cliches. You might even believe them, too.
But press conference bravado won’t fix a defense that lacks smarts and an offense that lacks trust. Not on this stage, at least.
The Warriors have won three titles on the back of a defense that could find a gear no their team could match. They were frenetic, tenacious, and had the rare and elite ability to flip a game in a manner of seconds. They were a force.
Where has that Warriors’ defense been in this series?
We saw it for a few fleeting, game-winning moments in Game 2 — when Klay Thompson was guarding Kawhi Leonard, allowing Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green to match up with non-shooter (Game 1 notwithstanding) Pascal Siakam and the injured Kyle Lowry, respectively.
Leonard, despite being hobbled by at least one leg injury, is demanding double, sometimes triple teams on dribble penetration — he’s so skilled, he demands the defense’s full attention; so strong, defenders are bouncing off him. Thompson — one of the best on-ball perimeter defenders in the NBA (and a sneaky strong player himself) — put in good a solid shift once he shifted onto Leonard in the final moments of the second quarter and at the beginning of the third quarter in Game 3, and Iguodala and Green were both able to play free safety behind him, reading the play and either committing to a double team or filling a passing lane.
The Warriors used that defense — and make no mistake, it was led by the defense — to go on an 18-0 run in the third quarter, effectively winning them the game.
But I doubt we see that defense again. When Thompson went out with a hamstring injury in the fourth quarter of that game, the Raptors started to get back into the contest. Leonard took control of the contest and nearly won it for Toronto.
Then you saw what happened in Game 3, when Thompson was unavailable. Again, Leonard controlled the game.
Game 4 was the most damning performance for the Warriors’ defense yet, and it went well beyond who was guarding Leonard. Iguodala — Leonard’s main defender Friday — did a solid, but unspectacular job. Thompson — even with a bum hamstring — did a bit better, but he wasn’t up for full-time Kawhi duty. It’s probably too much to ask of him in Game 5, too.
But the real issue was that there was no connectivity to the Warriors’ defense Friday. At times, it looked like they had never played together.
The Warriors have switched nearly everything on defense for five years, but against Toronto’s personnel, which has tremendous frontcourt size but can play five-out basketball, they have abandoned that identity for significant stretches of time. Unless Kevon Looney is on the floor, and with Steve Kerr hesitant to play Draymond Green at center without Kevin Durant in the lineup (your smallball lineup can be too small, especially against these Raptors) the Warriors can’t risk having a big man isolated on the perimeter. (And make no mistake, Leonard is looking for isolations in this series.)
It’s sound logic from the Warriors, but it hasn’t provided sound defense. Especially with DeMarcus Cousins on the floor, the Raptors have been able to run simple half-court sets without inhibition. The Warriors might as well be playing 4 v. 5 in those minutes.
And when the Warriors have switched on defense, they have been uncharacteristically late on rotations. That’s if the rotations happen at all. Whether it be laziness, bad decisions, or downright confusion from switching in and out of schemes and playing in lineups that are relatively untested and now being used against the best team the Warriors have played all year, Golden State’s defense is nowhere near championship level and there’s no reason, given their injuries and the matchups Toronto presents, to expect anything to change.
It’d be one thing if the heartbeat of the team, Green, wasn’t trying — but he is. At times, you get three, four guys playing great defense.
But there have been few possessions where all five Warriors are at that level, and Toronto has found the weak link in the chain time and time again. They’re meticulous and ruthless.
This is only surprising if you paid deference to the Warriors’ championship pedigree and read too far into their wins in the last two rounds of the playoffs. (Don’t blame yourself, I did it, too.)
But the Warriors didn’t play championship-level defense against the Rockets and Blazers — no, that was opportunist play against laughably overmatched opponents.
Perhaps we should have read more into the fact that the Clippers took two games off a full-strength Golden State team in Round 1.
Truth be told, I don’t think we’ve seen the Warriors play consistently authenticity elite defense — the kind they played every game for three years and then busted out for meaningful spurts last year — all season.
The Warriors have pushed the premise that their championship-level defense was merely sitting in the back shed, ready to be pulled out once they reached spring.
Turns out when the Warriors went to the shed, that defense was completely covered in rust.
Great defense was this team’s identity, but it has been lost somewhere along the way.
Of course, in the past — and as recently as the Western Conference Finals — the Warriors have been able to shoot their way past their poor defensive performances.
But with no Durant — the ultimate offensive safety blanket — in the lineup, and against a Toronto defense that is tailor-made to beat the perimeter-based Warriors, the offense hasn’t been nearly good enough to make up that sizable gap.
And as this series has progressed, we’ve seen Toronto’s physicality, length, and smarts upend the Warriors’ offensive identity as well.
The Dubs’ offensive greatness was built on trust. Egalitarianism and joy are just more cheerful ways to sum up a system predicated on selfless play and the open man — whomever that might be — taking the open shot.
But when even Stephen Curry, worn down by the workload without Durant — and coming off a 47-point, do-it-all performance in Game 3 — is hunting isolations on one possession and then hesitating to shoot a 3-pointer on another, you know that the trust has broken down.
You could see that trust in the system — and some players’ trusts in themselves — dissipate as Game 4 progressed. Curry said after the contest that the “wheels came off” — this is what he was talking about.
When you give up the ball, you set a screen — that’s the one rule of the Warriors’ offense. In his first and likely only season with the team, it’s clear Cousins didn’t pick up that lesson.
When he gave up the ball on the perimeter, Cousins had little interest in setting a screen and setting up a teammate. No, instead, he started begging to get it back. It was Sacramento Boogie.
I feel bad piling on a player who is fighting through injury, but there’s no excuse for Cousins downright refusing to make winning decisions on the offensive end on Friday. They were plays that would have been easier to execute on his bum wheel, too.
When Bogut and Kevon Looney — players without Cousins’ once-held offensive skills — came into the game and did the little things that help the Warriors’ offense click, it only made Cousins’ selfishness more apparent. The big man looked like he was playing for his next contract, not a title.
If only Cousins was the extent of the Warriors’ problems, though.
It’s clear that Andre Iguodala’s brain is getting in the way again — he doesn’t trust himself on the offensive end anymore. You can also see that Warriors’ star players don’t trust the team’s reserves to knock down shots, either.
It’s reminiscent of how the Warriors stopped trusting Harrison Barnes in the late stages of the 2016 NBA Finals. You remember how that worked out for the Dubs.
In 2019, though, it’s chum in the water for Toronto, who has been able to overload their defensive more and more as the series has progressed. Even the possible inclusion of Durant might not be enough to rectify the situation.
Can the Warriors re-establish that trust in each other again down 3-1?
Can they remove the rust from that defense and re-capture the magic of that Game 2 run?
Can this team find its identity?
Perhaps, but in all likelihood, the damage has already been done.
These Raptors have the upper hand on both sides the court — they’re in full control of the series mentally and in the scorebook.
And while Green was correct in saying that the Warriors have “won three straight games before”, and they absolutely have come back from down 3-1 in the past, they’ve never had to do it against a team that looks this much better than them.
These are not the Warriors we’ve come to know over the last five years.
And I honestly don’t know if we’ll ever see them again.
