Twisting The Wolves Away
What watching every Steph Curry three tells us about how hard pick and roll defense is.
Here’s my favorite play from last night’s matchup featuring two struggling Western Conference heavyweights:
The clip picks up a little late, but it features two ball screens for Steph Curry, first from Gary Payton II, followed by another from Trayce Jackson-Davis. The Warriors call this “dive roll” (see Joe Viray’s explainer here for more), with the first screener (GP2) diving to the rim ahead of the second pick and roll (between Steph and Jackson-Davis.) This play was the culmination of Minnesota’s evolving pick and roll coverage on Steph, and triggered another set of dominoes that helped Steph put the Wolves to bed.
Let’s rewind to the first quarter and the first of Steph’s seven made three pointers. A straightforward 1-5 pick and roll between Steph and Kevon Looney sees Rudy Gobert in a deep drop as is his wont, giving Steph acres of space to pull up for three.
Watch how deep Gobert is sitting, practically in the paint:
Against most teams and most ball handlers, this works for the Wolves. Placing Gobert closer to the rim allows them to leverage his rim protection, routinely amongst the best in the league. Moreover, Minnesota boasts a number of excellent perimeter defenders in Jaden McDaniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and even Anthony Edwards. Not unlike the championship Bucks team from a few years ago, the Gobert Minnesota teams have generally succeeded in dropping Gobert deep on pick and rolls and trusting their on-ball defenders to fight over screens and use their length to disrupt or dissuade pull-up threes.
And it generally works. But what generally works can fall apart against Wardell Stephen Curry. Zach Lowe once remarked on how Steph has broken us as NBA viewers. Lowe noted that he will watch a ball handler like Jamal Murray come around a screen and wonder why he isn’t pulling up for three when he gets a sliver of daylight. With Steph, a sliver can be an acre. Watch Steph’s second made three from last night, again with Gobert hanging back deep (albeit off a sideline out of bounds play instead of with Steph handling the ball):
Alexander-Walker does a pretty good job recovering back onto Curry there, despite a possibly-illegal screen from Jackson-Davis. But Steph can make even pretty good look inadequate.
And so the Wolves started bringing Gobert higher up on Steph screens, showing help at the level to dissuade a pull up long enough for Steph’s defender to get back in front of him. Contrast Gobert’s positioning here with the earlier screen grab:
Sometimes, even that isn’t enough…
That is good defense from Minnesota and absurd shot making from Steph. Tip of the hat and all that.
So Minnesota moved away from dropping the roll man’s defender and started bringing him up to the level on Steph. Fast forward to clutch time in the fourth quarter and the Dive Roll set highlighted at the top. On the first ball screen from GP2, the screener’s defender (Julius Randle) comes up to the level to give Steph’s defender (Jaden McDaniels) time to recover. GP2 on the short roll occupies Rudy Gobert long enough that when Trayce Jackson-Davis runs up to set the second screen, Gobert is multiple zip codes away from Steph coming around the Jackson-Davis pick.
Rewatch the clip and you might see Gobert frantically signaling to Randle that somebody has to pick up GP2. This was either a miscommunication between Randle and Gobert, or hesitation from Randle between recovering back onto his man or bringing a soft double on Steph, which engendered some uncertainty in Gobert as well. I suspect it was the latter, given what happened on the next Steph three.
But before getting to that, how might the Wolves have defended the Dive Roll set? Coach Chris Finch did not have his bigs, Randle and Gobert, switching onto Steph at any point. So switching the first pick and roll was out. Perhaps Gobert should have switched onto the diving GP2, with Randle transitioning from showing on Steph to switching onto Jackson-Davis as he came up to set the screen. That level of improvisation (and the execution required to pull it off) is hard to do on the fly. Golden State found a creative way to engineer a drop defense even with the Wolves consciously trying to do something different.
If that set marked the culmination of the Wolves’ evolving pick and roll defense in the game, it also marked the start of another chain leading to the game’s denouement. Back to Randle’s hesitation: On Steph’s next three, the Wolves seemed caught between switching and whatever this was:
Once Jaden McDaniels gets tangled up on the GP2 screen, it looks like Randle is almost set to switch onto Steph, but does not commit fully. That hesitation (perhaps induced by the threat of another Jackson-Davis screen) gives Steph enough room to launch another dagger.
Running out of time and down 10, the Wolves got more aggressive on their pick and roll coverage. And the Warriors were ready. First, Steph hits Trayce Jackson-Davis on the short roll, triggering a ping-ping-pong sequence that results in a Steph three that effectively put the game to bed.
Once the Wolves are in rotation there, Julius Randle (on GP2 in the weak side corner) should probably be rotating onto Steph sooner. 46 minutes in, it’s an excusable oversight. Credit the Warriors for poking at the Wolves pick and roll defense all night long and finally breaking it.
And again with Gobert showing more aggressively and Steph finding the man on the short roll, this time GP2, leading to an Andrew Wiggins dunk that would have reminded Warriors fans of Steph-Draymond-Andre Iguodala highlights from back in the day.1
Night-night. In a pick and roll league, it’s fun to track these moves and counter-moves.
Intriguing thing to monitor: In a limited number of non-garbage time possessions (226 to be precise), Warriors lineups featuring GP2, Steph, and Wiggins are +12.2/100 per Cleaning the Glass. That includes an efficient shot profile on offense and a decent number of turnovers forced on the other side. I would love to see the GP2/Steph/Wiggins/Buddy Hield/Draymond Green lineup get more burn.