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The Warriors’ first-round fly-by: A strong opening salvo, and warning to the rest of the league, with some fixes to make for the deeper rounds

 

* NOTE: I am not in New Orleans; all the best reporting and analysis will come from those who are. These are just my scatter-shot thoughts from watching tonight’s game on TV.

-If you can’t stop Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, you can’t beat the Warriors. That is just a fact that was proven about 67 times this regular season, and reinforced four more times in the Warriors’ just-completed first-round sweep of New Orleans.

Especially tonight, when the Warriors kept running screen-roll action with Curry, forced a Pelicans big man to jump out on him, and let Curry go to work, usually for a splash three-pointer.

And if New Orleans defended the screen-roll well, it still opened up plenty of room for a pass to Draymond Green or allowed for a quick cut by Thompson–and voila, Curry had 39 points, Thompson 25 and Green 22, all on very efficient shooting.


You can’t beat the Warriors if you can’t stop that
, and yes, the Warriors are very good at beating you even if you really concentrate on that, even if you have Anthony Davis to cover half the court at a time, and even if you’re desperately trying to avoid a sweep.

That’s what the Warriors showed the league in this powerful series statement: Everything they showed in the regular season to win 67 games… they’ve brought it all into the playoffs, so watch out.

Oh, and also: You can’t beat the Warriors unless you figure out how to score efficiently on their aggressive, switching defense, keyed by Green swarming high and low and Andrew Bogut on the back line.

You might score here and there on the Warriors–get a run, hit some shots, just like New Orleans did several times in this series when Davis, Eric Gordon or Ryan Anderson were running hot.

But over 48 minutes, it’s going to be almost impossible to keep scoring on the Warriors–again, that’s what they proved in the regular season, and now they have First-Round Proof against a talented Pelicans team, which featured a player who might dominate this league for a long time.

So yes, this was a very good first round performance by the Warriors, who were certainly tested at times, including tonight, but who always had the better players and the sharper game plan.

OK, three quarters of Game 3 were a debacle… and the Warriors still found a way to win that, which was both a warning shot to the rest of the playoff teams (you can beat down the Warriors for almost the entire game and Curry, Green and Thompson can STILL find  a way back in)…

And also a little bit of a itchy thing for the Warriors, who know they will have to play better as they go deeper into the playoffs.

Such as the next round, against the Memphis-Portland winner.

Memphis certainly has the defensive personnel to swarm Curry and Thompson… and the low-post game to attack the Warriors on offense… but we’ll get more into that match-up when and if the Grizzlies move toward clinching the first-round series.

* Stat, from Warriors PR: The Warriors are now 43-0 this season when holding opponents under 100 points, including 3-0 in this series.

* The Warriors will get at least a week before Round 2 starts, and maybe more than that. Plenty of time to rest up, that’s for sure.
The earliest the next Warriors series can start is a week from today at Oracle, and that’s only if Memphis dispatches Portland very quickly.

 

* I would say the largest concern for Kerr and the Warriors staff would be: They didn’t get much offense from Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes, Shaun Livingston (except for Game 3) and Marreese Speights in this series and none of them looked particularly ready to score much any time soon.

This is how it went individually for those four…

-Barnes: 8.5 points per, 3 for 7 from three-point distance in the series, 43.3% FG overall.

-Iguodala: 6.3 points per, 2 for 16 from three-point distance in the series, 31% FG overall,

-Livingston: 4.3 points per, 50% FG overall.

-Speights: 1.8 points per, 20% FG overall. Note: he played only 41 seconds in a scoreless Game 1; and just 4 minutes in a scoreless Game 4.

-Barbosa: 6 points per, 0 for 3 from three-point distance inthe series, 45.4% FG overall.

At some point the Warriors are going to need a few jump shots from Iguodala and Barnes especially.Neither them looked too interested in shooting the ball the last few games. Maybe the week off will get them going again.

Because Memphis or whoever else the Warriors play in the deeper rounds are absolutely going to lay off those guys and throw everything at Curry and Thompson, and if the other guys can’t or won’t shoot, it will get a little dicey for the Warriors.

I’ll put it this way: I don’t think the Warriors are beating Memphis or San Antonio if none of these five can put together a single 15-point game. The Warriors might need two or three of those from this group.

* But this series showed what the Warriors can do to a team that has a non-scorer in a post position.

Having Omer Asik in the game killed the Pelicans offense because he can’t score on Bogut and it also allowed Bogut freelance through the paint on D.

* As the Warriors PR crew noted, Green became the first player with four consecutive  point/rebound double-doubles with at least 5 assists in the playoffs since Tim Duncan in 2003.

What a monster game for Green. What a series. What a season.

Oh, he was +18 tonight in 42 minutes.

He was +12 in Game 3 in 40 minutes.

He was +24 in Game 2 in 42 minutes.

He was +23 in Game 1 in 42 minutes.
Add it up: Green was +77 overall in the series.

The Warriors were +32 overall in the series. So that means: When Green was off the floor, the Warriors were -45.
Let that number sink in.

* Other plus/minus totals:
-Curry was +50 for the series.

-Thompson was +38.

-Barnes was +35.

-Bogut was +9.

-Barbosa was +4.

-Livingston was -17.

-Igoudala was -23.

Tim Kawakami