How each Western Conference contender can beat the Warriors
By Jared Dubin
As we head into the final few days of the regular season, it’s become clear that the Golden State Warriors (who have locked up the No.1 overall seed for the third consecutive season) are once again the overwhelming favorites to make the NBA Finals out of the Western Conference. The Dubs’ current odds of winning the West, per Basketball-Reference, stand at 67.2 percent — nearly 50 percent higher than the next-closest team.
Every playoff spot out West has been locked down at this point. The Spurs are locked in as the No. 2 seed; the Rockets have the No. 3; the Jazz and Clippers will take the No. 4 and 5 seeds in some order; the Thunder have landed at No. 6; and the Grizzlies have the No. 7 seed. With all due respect to the eighth-seeded Blazers, these six teams comprise the group with even a prayer, however small, of knocking the Warriors off before they make their return to the Finals.
If we accept that each of these teams’ chances of actually defeating Golden State is already relatively small, the more interesting question becomes not the percentage chance that any of them can do it, but if they are to do it, how will it be done?
San Antonio Spurs: Defense and execution
Amazingly, San Antonio will likely finish this season with the best defense in basketball, despite having lost Tim Duncan (last season’s league-leader in Defensive Real Plus-Minus) to retirement last offseason. They’ll do this despite starting Tony Parker and Pau Gasol for most of the season, and despite David Lee being heavily involved off the bench. It’s pretty remarkable.
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The Spurs, though, do have two of the very best wing defenders in the NBA in Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. Kawhi is probably the best perimeter defender since Scottie Pippen. That’s not enough to *stop* the Warriors, of course, but it’s hard to envision a better pair of perimeter defenders to use against Stephen Curry (Green) and Kevin Durant (Leonard). If the Spurs are to win a series against Golden State, the foundation of their upset will have to start there. LaMarcus Aldridge will have to cover a ton of ground and the Gregg Popovich will have to break out his bag of tricks as well (including cross-matches with Kawhi on Draymond Green and a big man on Andre Iguodala when the Dubs go small). Still, San Antonio’s primary goal will have to be forcing the pace to slow down so scoring is at a premium. They can’t afford to get into a track meet.
If and when they accomplish that, it becomes out out-executing the Warriors in the half-court. The San Antonio offense isn’t quite the whirring precision machine it was a few years ago — they now slow things down and pound it into the post and isolate on the wing far more often than they did during their last title run — but they still run diligently through their offense as well as anyone in the league. They’ll have to minimize turnovers, maximize trips to the line, and make the most of every possession.
Houston Rockets: 3-pointers and variance
Interestingly, the Rockets will likely take things to the opposite extreme of the Spurs. They will run and gun and shoot and gamble and hope that they catch enough fire to outscore NBA’s best offense. Daryl Morey said as much on a podcast with ESPN’s Zach Lowe back in March.
This season’s Rockets, powered by Mike D’Antoni, have already smashed the single-season records for 3-pointers made and attempted, and they’re likely to push things even further should they match up with Golden State come May or June. The Rockets have taken Moreyball to its logical extreme this season, and them trying to outshoot possibly the best group of shooters in NBA history is the most fun possible extension of that extremism.
Is there anyone that doesn’t want to see James Harden pushing and pushing and firing missiles all over the floor while he and Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson and Lou Williams and Trevor Ariza and Sam Dekker (if healthy) fire away over and over and over again? Does that not sound exhilarating? Attempting to beat the Warriors at their own game is a dangerous proposition, but what better option is there?
Utah Jazz: Length and flexibility
The Jazz are a team that can (I’m really sorry about what I’m about to do here) play all the notes. Because of the way the roster is constructed, Utah can go big or small with relative comfort and maintain its elite defense so long as Rudy Gobert, Gordon Hayward, and George Hill are on the floor. They’re on the verge of winning 50 games this season despite their five starters having played only 13 games together and sharing the floor for just 151 minutes. Their success is because of that ability to prevent scoring, no matter who else is in the game with those players.
Against the Warriors, the Jazz will likely have to ratchet up the pressure within their usual conservative scheme just a bit — Gobert can’t hang back near the free-throw line when Steph comes around a screen, for example. But Utah does have one thing that can work to its advantage and allow them to be slightly more conservative than other defenses: crazy length.
Hill, despite standing just 6-2, has a 6-9 wingspan. The 6-7 Rodney Hood has a 6-8.5 wingspan. Derrick Favors (who just returned from his latest injury) is 6-10 but his arms spread out to 7-4. And Gobert is 7-2 with a monster-sized 7-8.5 wingspan. That’s an absurd amount of long limbs on the floor. That lets the Jazz stay in their defensive shell and protect the paint while still being able to bother both shots and passing lanes. The Jazz will be looking to make an impact in much the same way as last season’s Thunder were able to use the combination of length and athleticism to bother the Warriors’ offense.
Los Angeles Clippers: Supernova superstars
We all know about the Clippers’ struggles with the Warriors over the last few seasons. Since the start of the 2014-15 season, LA is a disgusting 1-11 against their rivals from the Bay. Whatever they’ve been doing, obviously, has not been working — especially on defense. The Warriors’ point totals in those 11 Clipper losses: 121, 106, 110, 112, 124, 115, 114, 115, 144, 133, 123. Yikes.
The Clips are unlikely to suddenly come up with some new answer that hasn’t presented itself to them at this point, especially since they’ve not undergone any major personnel changes since the last matchup. So it’ll take something extremely out of the ordinary for the Clippers to reverse the trend and come away with a win. In short, Chris Paul and Blake Griffin will likely have to take their respective games to heights they’ve never reached before. And even if CP takes the Point God routine to a new level, and even if Blake throws it back to the 2015 playoffs and more, they’ll still need DeAndre Jordan and J.J. Redick to raise their games as well. And even that might not be enough.
Oklahoma City Thunder: Let Westbrook be Westbrook
Oklahoma City took the Warriors to the brink of elimination last season by ramping up the pressure all over the floor, switching like crazy, and trying to run the run-and-gun Dubs ragged. For four games, it worked. And then, well, we all know what happened after that.
This season’s Thunder cannot simply enact the same strategy. Two pillars of that game plan (Kevin Durant, Serge Ibaka) now ply their trade elsewhere, and one is actually on the Warriors.
The four Thunder-Warriors games this season were outright bloodbaths — even the one Durant had to sit, which the Dubs still won by 16, after entering the fourth quarter up by 26. There is not much hope here beyond individual brilliance somehow overpowering the Warriors’ collective talent advantage. Expect Oklahoma City to unleash the full force of the Russell Westbrook Show, with the big boys down low banging bodies, knocking heads, rampaging the boards, and doing their damnedest to dirty up the game. And even that is extraordinarily unlikely to be enough.
Memphis Grizzlies: Grit n’ grind
Memphis’ best shot is to enact the same strategy as the Cavaliers have during the last two NBA Finals. They need to grind the games to a screeching halt, simultaneously driving up variance while forcing the at-times careless Warriors to maximize their every possession. They should pressure the ball in the backcourt, run the shot clock down to its end, hammer the offensive glass, and ratchet up their body-blows in the paint to the nth degree. (Everyone knows the Grizzlies are famous for bumping every cutter on his way through the lane, gambling that the refs can’t actually call *everything*. There’s no better opponent to enact that strategy against than this one.)
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The issue for the Grizzlies in enacting this strategy is, well, the Cavs have LeBron James and they don’t. That makes things considerably more difficult. Marc Gasol and Mike Conley and Zach Randolph and Tony Allen have tried this against these guys before, and while it got them a 2-1 lead, they were then blown off the floor over the final three games of the series. Still, the Grizz can’t outscore the Dubs and they can’t magically change their personnel, so if they’re going to win, it’s going to have to be ugly.