Janky is No Problem (Warriors 119, Raptors 104)

The “blueprint”, if one existed, for beating the dynastic Golden State Warriors was primarily authored by Nick Nurse and the Toronto Raptors, who famously won the 2019 NBA title at the Warriors’ expense (admittedly aided of course by catastrophic injuries to Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant). The key to everything was (of course) Stephen Curry, with the new wrinkle being the sheer amount of attention that Nurse and the Raptors were willing to grant him. Selling out to stop Steph has always been a “acceptable” playoff strategy, with comical side effects: uncontested 3s for Klay Thompson, uncontested dunks for Kevin Durant. But with the former hobbled (at the minimum) and the latter out entirely, Nurse went deep into his bag of tricks and pulled out things like the box-and-one and the triangle-and-two, defenses that are employed in grade school by coaches desperate to stop an opposing team’s singular star. He bet (correctly) that minus KD and Klay, the Warriors’ back-of-rotation players (such as Alfonzo McKinnie, Quinn Cook, Jonas Jerebko, DeMarcus Cousins) would not be able to make the Raptors pay for throwing the kitchen sink at Steph. With KD leaving for Brooklyn and Klay’s catastrophic Achilles tear just before the draft last season, these “janky” defense became the norm, as Steph saw defensive fronts that he probably hadn’t seen since he was a student at Davidson (or in high school). They worked to some degree, in that they made Steph expend an ungodly amount of energy to even squeeze off a semi-contested shot. But Steph, as befitting a player of his caliber, mostly figured them out, striking that fine balance between hunting his own shot and deferring to others. As a result, he put together one of his finest individual seasons last year, unfortunately only making it as far as the play-in games before bowing out. To many, the question still remained: if the Warriors made the postseason last season, what would happen if a team sold out as desperately as the Raptors to stop Steph? Would others be able to step up and take (and make) big shots? While an early-in-the-regular-season game at Chase Center cannot even begin to approximate the crucible of the NBA playoffs, on a night when Nick Nurse (again) pulled out all the stops to slow down Steph, the Warriors answered emphatically. Behind red-hot shooting and scoring performances from Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins, and a number of ancillary contributions from role players all over the roster, the Dubs throttled the Raptors 119-104. This 15-point win came on a night where Steph scored just 12 points on 2-10 shooting, suggesting (for one night at least) that these Warriors are up to the task of stepping up when Steph gets swarmed. With Klay Thompson’s return drawing nearer by the day…the future looks pretty exciting in Golden State.

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