Kevin Durant has expanded his pick-and-roll game for the Warriors
By Jeff Siegel
After three straight years of running more than nine pick-and-rolls per game for the Oklahoma City Thunder, moving to the Golden State Warriors was a massive offensive change for Kevin Durant. Gone were the days where he would hold the ball for most of the possession at the top of the key, waiting for a big man to set just the right screen. In the Warriors’ scheme, Durant’s pick-and-roll usage fell off by more than 50 percent, replaced with more off-ball work.
This year, due to Stephen Curry’s injury earlier in the season and some changes in the Golden State offense, Durant is getting more opportunities in that primary ball handler role and his pick-and-roll usage has shot up to almost seven possessions per game. As a percentage of his total offense, Durant has seen his pick-and-roll usage jump from 17.8 percent last year to 25.0 percent this year as the Warriors have relied on him more often to create offense in these situations.
Against the San Antonio Spurs in Saturday’s marquee matchup between two of the Western Conference’s best teams, the Warriors gave Durant the keys to the offense in the early going, where he was largely effective playing against the slower big men the Spurs trotted out. After a slow start offensively, Steve Kerr put the ball in Durant’s hands on four possessions in a three-minute stretch to reinvigorate the offense through some traditional pick-and-roll, and Durant delivered — the Warriors scored six points on those four trips down the court. That trend continued in the second half, when Golden State ran five pick-and-rolls for Durant in the third quarter.
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Given the Warriors’ insane personnel and ability to space the floor with Durant, Curry and Klay Thompson, it seems as though it would be obvious to run a high pick-and-roll on the majority of their possessions. Durant and Curry are lethal in isolations against big men switching out on them and they can either finish at the rim or find one of the other two all-world shooters on the perimeter if they get a head of steam toward the basket. However, the pick-and-roll represents a small portion of the Golden State offense. They finish possessions with a pick-and-roll just 19.5 percent of the time, the smallest percentage in the league. For comparison, the Houston Rockets use pick-and-rolls to find a shot on 37.3 percent of their possessions, almost double the Warriors. They prefer to work through the post and off-ball screens, and it’s hard to argue with the results seeing as they’ve been either first or second in offense in each of the four years since Kerr took over.
In particular, Durant and the Warriors targeted LaMarcus Aldridge as the big man in pick-and-roll, but they did a lot of their damage moving the ball to the roll man and making decisions from there. This is effective for Golden State because they can stretch the defense even further by having three shooters surrounding the ball on the perimeter, allowing for some nice interplay between their big men in the paint:
Aldridge recovers nicely in both of the above clips and blocks Draymond Green at the rim in the second play, but the open area in the paint is exactly what the Warriors want to produce on these actions. Each of Golden State’s main big men rank highly in assist percentage at their position, led by Green, who can make just about every pass in the book off that short roll.
David West and Zaza Pachulia have also been effective in these areas the last two years since Durant joined the team. When teams get back into the paint to clog the passing lanes for those big guys, they just kick the ball back out to Durant and he isolates against whichever poor sucker is left in front of him:
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Golden State is effective in pick-and-roll, whether it’s Curry or Durant handling the ball. They’re world class in just about every individual play type, and while they score a league-best 107.9 points per 100 possessions in pick-and-roll, they’re so much better in other areas that it makes sense they limit those plays to a smaller portion of their overall offense.
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Still, when things get tougher in the playoffs and defenders are allowed to get away with more holding and fouling on those beautiful off-ball sets the Warriors love to run, being able to go back to the pick-and-roll will be a crutch worth having. Durant’s developed a nice chemistry with the slew of big men Golden State throws on the floor, giving them another ball handler beside Curry who can carry the load in certain situations. It may never come into play during another Warriors title run, but if it does, they’ll be glad they gave these extra possessions in the regular season to Durant to get him ready for it.