Their starters can't play all the minutes. We need a bench full of 3 point specialists too. Run and gun is the only way to compete and we're the closest team to being about to do that.
Hope GSW has some injury issues with some key personnel. Rockets need to add multiple facilitators into the lineup for a more varied offense. And need to add a defensive "presence" in the front court.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...-just-doesnt-exist-yet/?addata=espn:frontpage The league’s other 29 teams were less likely to beat the Warriors by playing an inferior version of Warriors basketball. Cleveland needed to practically burn down the nets with its 3-point shooting to win a Game 4 shootout. But opponents have been more successful by taking Golden State out of its element: having enough defense and length to disrupt the Warriors’ shooting, while having enough offense to keep up with the inevitable points allowed. Opponents with top-12 defenses1 fared best against the Dubs this past season, accounting for eight of Golden State’s 15 regular-season losses. More broadly than that, beating the Warriors will likely require slowing them downin wins, and 17.7 far and away the best in the league, but also in half-court scenarios. The clubs that have the most success against them have smart, versatile defenders who possess the length to contest Golden State’s sharpshooters3 — the team shot 41 percent from 3-point range in its regular-season wins, but just 27 percent in its losses — and the height and size to switch defensive assignments and neutralize the Warriors’ highly unusual methods for setting screens. That partially explains how long, rangy teams such as the San Antonio Spurs and Milwaukee Bucks have done better against the Warriors during the past three regular seasons than just about anyone else. They have respectable defenders they can throw onto the Warriors’ best scorers, and the ability to force Golden State far later into the shot clock — where efficiency plummets — than most other teams can.
[ Well, that is a way to up risk profile--the more volatility, the better chance for the underdog to win. Look at the one game the Cavaliers won in the Finals. They shot an absolutely ridiculous number of three-pointers (45) and hit an absurd percentage of them (.533). Had they hit even an excellent-but-not-absurd percentage of them, like .400, they would have hit 18 three-pointers instead of 24. Six three-pointers is 18 points or basically the entire margin of victory. So yeah--we would probably be well-advised to gun more three-pointers when facing the Warriors and hope to get lucky with a super-hot shooting night.
I think you have to be different to beat or at least compete against them. You will never beat them at their game. The rockets need more players who can get a quality shot. I don't have a problem with Harden being the pg, but they need some guys who don't need Harden to score. I would like to see if they could get Brooke Lopez using Anderson and pieces. I would like to get Gay using Trevor and Beverly as salary match. Lopez has been healthy the last couple of years. He's still a below avg rebounder, but he's a very good post player and have extended his range to 3pt territory. He's also a very good ft shooter. Rudy Gay is a proven scorer. He's also long enough to match up with KD. He's not KD, no one is,but you need someone with that kind of length, plus he can get quality shots against anyone in the league. As a free agent, I would look at James Johnson. He's not Desmond, but he's in that mold. He's a sf/pf type who does alot of things. Jmo
I don't get it guys. I've been reading a lot of posts about how we have to outgun them. Warriors are one of the best offensive teams in NBA history, if not the best. We were second, and by some measures we were the 10th best offensive team of all time. But for me the bottom line is: are we going to be able to out-offense the Warriors enough to make up for the differential where we are ranked SIXTEEN SPOTS behind them defensively? Just visualize it. How much better than the Warriors do you have to be offensively in order to overcome the fact that they are 2nd best defense and we are the 18th? This is a team featuring Kevin Durant and Steph Curry as primary scorers and Klay Thompson as 3rd scorer. Aside from Durant, Curry, Harden, Lebron... who is even in that category/tier offensively? No one. Not Isaiah Thomas, not Russell Westbrook, not Chris Paul. We are talking about all-time scoring talents, not just All-NBA. IMO we are not going to outscore these guys and while they are an excellent defensive team, the Spurs showed that you can be a better defensive team than them. We have to take a GIANT hatchet to that defensive gap between us and the Warriors otherwise nothing will matter. Defense is not sexy, I get it, but it is as likely to win as offense. It costs less. The Warriors do not have a monopoly on the most elite defenders as they do on scorers. We can make massive gains here. We have already shown that we can crush people offensively even with mediocre scoring talent around Harden. What we need to acknowledge and accept now is that as long as Harden is on the floor, the other 4 guys ALL have to be excellent defenders or be able to score 25ppg efficiently. The more plausible scenario is we go out and get excellent defenders I think.
As long as they're able to keep that core four together in their prime, they're going to be the overwhelming favorite to win it all. It's not just about how good the players are, it's about how well they fit together too. Sure, we could add Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, Gordon Hayward, or whoever, but odds are the fit won't be nearly as good as the Warriors have now.
We absolutely have to improve on defense to have a chance, but the fact of the matter is there's just no way that we can build a team that will be objectively better than the Warriors. We aren't going to have the benefit of a MVP being paid like a 6th man, a $25mm cap increase in one offseason, etc... Our only chance is to play the volatility game. I think with some shrewd moves, we could build a team that could win a series against the Warriors like 5% of the time, with that 5% coming when our shooters just catch absolute fire and we catch GS in a shooting slump.
An devistating injury Phil Jackson The group that ruined Seattle Basketball -- Any of the above will do the job, but other than that... The Future is Bleak
I don't buy this at all. A team is more than individual talent. There is no way we will acquire players that objectively are a better collection of offensive talent, and that is the only insurmountable hurdle. As good as they are defensively, they were not the best this season and they are certainly not historically good. We can build a historically good defensive team. And that doesn't mean JVG or Thibs-type teams with snail's pace taking away posessions by slowing down the game. I mean exactly like the Warriors and Spurs, defensively efficient. And in fact, it is far easier and cheaper to acquire incredible defenders than it is to acquire incredible scorers. We can be a far better passing team than them. Their passing comes from system (ball/player movement) and character (unselfishness). Curry is a very good passer for his position and Green is the best at his. Durant, Pachulia and Thompson are negligble passers. Passing multiplies scoring efficiency, simply because the ball is exponentially quicker than the quickest NBA player. We're not going to win a series on the volatility game, if I were the owner and my GM came to me with that as the plan I would fire him on the spot. We might get a game or 2 and we might lose a game or 2 because of that volatility. That's not how you approach taking down a dynasty. We are at war. This Warriors team is going to be at the top tier for half a decade. Experimentation with offensive and defensive philosophies is the sign of a progressive and persistent organization, but if it constitutes more than 10% of our overall work/planning, then we are not doing enough. The reality is that people are hard-wired to worship what just happened for the Warriors, and it's gotten blown way out of proportion. The Cavs played poorly because they were poorly coached offensively and they played poor defense. The Warriors have accumulated an insane amount of individual offensive talent and have a coaching staff that is brilliant in putting it all together, managing HUMANS LIKE HUMANS, and planning for the future. They are not by any means invincible. The notion that with SHREWD management we can hope to come to a place where we would win 5% of the time against the Warriors is reactionary. That volatility is diminished over a 7 game series and we already just beat them 25% of the games we played them this season. We're in good hands. Morey, MDA and Bzdelik are possibly the best collection of GM/Coach/Assistant in the league. We're going to figure this out. I just hope they are willing to take big risks to transform the underlying identity of this squad. I have spent my time defending Harden for a long time, and I sincerely believe that in an average NBA season over the last 20 years, it has been easy to win a championship hiding the defensive deficiencies of a historically significant offensive talent. He is at least 1/5th of our defense, and like I said we are at war. When it's war time, you can't afford 20% of your defense to be garbage. You can't hide that against the Warriors. And we have to understand, Harden has a very REAL attention problem. It's not laziness, and it's not always fatigue. He simply has an attention problem - I'm sure diagnosable. And despite that, he is an indispensable NBA player. I am worried about him. I hope he watched his iso-loving friend win a championship by drastically reducing iso's, upping defense and moving off the ball. Defense. Defense. Defense. I know we will not be first seed in the West. But I don't buy that we cannot be a 50-50 playoff matchup with them, those are entirely different things. We just really need athletic defensive forward who can hit the 3 ball. Tough to acquire right now, but not impossible. I trust the staff.
