A mini-breakdown: The Curry/KD Pick and Roll.

So after last night game, I was all hyped up to do a detailed, in-depth film study of the many Curry/KD PnRs but....3ball.io isn't working well for some reason and missing many of the plays, and because a lot of possessions ended up in missed shots/TOs, none of them appear in the highlight vids.

Therefore, I'm going to do a mini-breakdown of one play and explain my thoughts about the Curry/KD PnR.

Here is the play. The result of the play is an easy dunk by KD, since two defenders stuck to Curry.

Now, let's go frame-by-frame to see exactly what happened.

We see here, KD set the pick. Notice how Plumlee is leaving Dray wide open to try to help on the play.

Curry sees this, and immediately passes it off to Dray. Dray, to his credit, notices Plumlee closing in on him, so makes the quick touchpass to KD

With Plumlee out of the way and the last defender having to stick to Zaza, easy dunk

Cool, so what's wrong with this?

Well, for one, if you scout this play, the correct decision would be for Plumlee to stay in the paint and ignore Draymond. Which exposes two potential weaknesses of the Warriors:

1. Can Draymond hit that shot consistently? Crunch time in the playoffs, is this a shot I can trust? I have no idea. But smart defenses will give up that shot every single time, because it's probably the worst possible open shot the Warriors can generate.

2. KD isn't that good of an passer on the move. We've been spoiled by the consistently amazing passing of Draymond, but to my knowledge, I haven't seen KD consistently finish great passes while on the move. That's because surveying the defense, while dribbling forward with a split second to make your decision is incredibly difficult. KD has proven to be an adept passer out of the post, but standing still and waiting for a play to develop is no where near the difficulty of the decisions a roll man has to make in their limited time.

I mention all this because I distinctly remember a play last night, where KD rolled, but was stopped by Dray's man, forcing him to pass out to Dray, and the play died. It gave me a pretty good idea of how teams would generally defend this action. You'll have to trust me on this obviously, because I can't find it on 3ball.io....

Now KD is a very intelligent player, and maybe he will develop this skill. But as of right now, against good defenses who properly pack the paint by helping off Draymond, I'm not super confident at KD rolling the the rim.

Esentially, what I'm saying is that, the Curry/Dray PnR may be superior than the Curry/KD PnR in almost every aspect

Dray is an elite passer, while KD is an elite shooter. Switching the two around to positions where they are worse at, doesn't make much sense.

However, there is a caveat....

The Curry/KD pick and roll will bust up switches

Last playoffs, teams figured out how to to best defend the Curry/Dray PnR: by switching, and forcing Curry to go 1 on 1. Draymond, for all his talents, isn't that good at posting up mismatches. It was basically whether Curry score in iso against a big. He did it for stretches, but ultimately, his injuries derailed him and he was unable to generate good looks consistently.

But this is where KD comes in, and why KD is a far superior option to Draymond in this situation.

Check out this play, from an earlier Portland game

It's a Curry/KD PnR, but Portland switches the action, so KD has no open space to roll to.

But guess what, he now has CJ "BBQ Chicken" McCollum defending him. He rises up for an easy turnaround J.

This is phenomenal because it gives the Warriors one more option to attack switches. They will no longer have to rely on a fatigued Curry to generate everything, and distributing the scoring load will make it easier for everyone. In the playoffs last year, both OKC and the Cavs switched heavily against the Warriors and really bogged down the offense. KD's ability to punish the switch will be vital in the playoffs.

Things to watch for in the future: Will KD pop? Or will KD roll?

I think I counted one Curry/KD Pick and Pop 3, a miss off a wide-open shot. Quite frankly, I'm still not sure why they don't run Pick and Pops for Curry/KD and get KD more open 3s, instead of rolling him to the rim. It will be definitely worth watching just HOW KD moves after a screen, whether he pops out or rolls to the basket, and how the offense will change around it.

Why you should care? Well, for those basketball nerds out there, I invite you all to watch Dallas's offense, and how Rick Carlisle leverages an 80-year old Dirk's PnP 3 gravity to open the floor for his offense. Once KD establishes himself as a PnP 3 threat, that will open up an ENTIRELY different set of plays for the offense. It will also solve the problem of defenders helping off Draymond, because defenders must cover a ton of space in order to help on that play (e.g., compared to the space he has to cover just to slide into the paint).

Kerr/Curry/KD and co basically have like 50 more games to figure it out, and I'm sure they will be trying many different variations of KD setting a pick of Curry. It will be interesting to see what they start favoring.

TL:DR

The Curry/KD PnR is yet another potent offensive tool the Warriors can go to generate good shots. It's still rough. I know people here like to talk about the PnR like it's an easy play, but it's got a lot of intricacies, like timing of the pass, or passing to where you guess the roll man is going to be, that Curry/KD will have to figure out. Even then, it's still pretty exciting to see it being used more often, and I can't wait to see what it will look like when Curry/KD really establishes their chemistry.