Many people have heard of the box-and-one defense. They likely remember it from their earliest days of basketball: elementary, junior high, or perhaps even high school. They aren’t used to watching it on television, and almost certainly didn’t expect to see the Toronto Raptors using it in the NBA Finals.
And yet, for the final 5:22 of Game 2, that’s exactly what the Raptors did. Nick Nurse, one of the more unconventional coaches in the NBA, turned to the gimmicky defense to slow the Golden State Warriors.
The move shocked everybody. Jeff Van Gundy, who has been coaching at the professional level since the 1980s, was bewildered.