“The moment of innocent revelry was short-lived. The coach seized control of his body again. Above a baked bean tray, Kerr started pantomiming And1 mixtape handles, muttering to himself, “Now if we could just stop doing this … shit.” Kerr’s stylistic preference was no secret. During the Game 6 blowout, from the FedEx Forum seats, you could hear the coach repeatedly hollering, “Move the ball!” or “Move the fucking ball!”
Basketball is a unique game, but it has cycles. Every year the successful teams are evaluated. Now they explore the data to figure out whose plans are most successful.
Good coaches can access their talent and develop a system that will fit them best to get the best possible outcome. Steve Kerr and Greg Pop have a different strategy. They want to make sure their teams rotate the ball from side to side moving the defense. The players have to adjust to their style.
It is a great tactic that enables players to want to play good basketball because they have made the organizations notable for their play and the culture they build. Even the superstars like Kevin Durant and Steph Curry for Golden State and Tim Duncan, Kawhi Leonard for San Antonio adapted their system, which helped everyone follow suit.
Amazingly, they have developed this culture but even they fall victim to the “streetball” effect. When the opposite team plays isolation basketball most of the game, it is easy to get stuck playing that same way. Just think about streetball. Streetball is all about ego. Most streetball players spend their time playing, trying to please the crowd, hoping they will get some oohs and aahs from the audience. When someone is playing like this, it makes anyone think of it as an individual battle. It makes anyone want to go back and attack their opponent, and it can result in one on one basketball in a team sport.
The hero ball happened to the Warriors when they played the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference finals in 2018. Chris Paul and James Harden are two wizards with the basketball, so when they would make a move on the Warriors defenders, it would make everyone on both teams stop and watch the show. Steph and Durant started to get into an individual battle and dribbled way more than usual.
I want to look back at this series and use it as a base study for my dribble project. I will determine if the Golden State players were getting more effective spacing in this series with extra dribbles. I will compare this to a series where they had substantially fewer dribbles.
It is interesting now that Kevin Durant went from playing with Steph Curry to playing with James Harden this year. This is a really different style so I will also look into this comparison later. “KD went from the Splash brothers to the dribble brothers.” When talking about Kevin Durant playing with James Harden now with the Brooklyn nets. Shaq made a joke of “dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble.” This will be an interesing comparision of styles.