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Puffer wrote:
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I do not think that the players were completely mentally ready for the Raptors. GSW just played two teams (Houston and Portland) where they will win a talent-versus-talent battle every time. Lillard and McCollum, especially without Nurkic? Check. Houston with Harden but with an aging Paul? Check. Toronto's team chemistry on both ends of the floor combined with the level and diversity of talent they are able to put out on the floor, and the ability of Nick Nurse to make the calls that maximize that talent mean that GSW is not talented enough without Durant and with Iguodala at 60-70% to just show up and do their usual our-talent-against-your-talent things and blow the Raptors out of the water. I'm not convinced that can do this successfully on the back end of the series if they end up without Iguodala and with Durant only at 60-70% either.
I don't think this is all on Kerr, either. In particular, it sounds like he knew that GSW needed to get back quickly on transition all game, but the players were playing the same game they've been playing for at least the past two rounds, and probably beyond, confident that no team in the league had the horses to outplay them in transition, never mind having the audacity to gameplan to do it. If four years of extreme playoff success have fossilized the minds of the GSW players into playing a very specific brand of basketball to the point where they cannot make the types of adaptations that their coach wants them to, they may very well be in trouble against a very adaptable Raptors team.
Here's the other thing: GSW has had the mindset in the Durant era of playing talent-against-talent and just trusting the talents to do their thing. (And let's be fair: when you have Curry/Thompson/Durant/Green/Iguodala and a good game plan, or even just Curry/Thompson/Green, that is going to be a recipe for success 90% of the time). GSW does not play transcendent team basketball; they play thoroughly well-coached transcendent individual basketball games. Toronto doesn't have the same number of all-NBA-level talents as a fully healthy GSW team does but they have played deliberate team basketball the entire season, and the playoff gauntlet they have come through has shaped them into a team that plays team basketball at a level I'm not sure I've seen in the past ten years. And that combined with Toronto's talent level means that GSW is facing a kind of challenge they haven't really faced in the playoffs before: can your talents really come together and play as a team rather than just a bunch of individual talents that have complementary skill sets and good playing habits together?
What does that mean for this series and for game 2? Well, I have no doubt that Kerr will make adjustments for game 2, but I wonder whether the GSW players have the level of team chemistry and synchronicity needed for the players to adapt to changes which are primarily the responsibility of other players. For instance, it is very likely that Kerr will want Green to play Siakim tighter because Siakim has the height/speed/lateral quicks/smarts to score on Green if he doesn't. Are the other GSW players going to be able to adapt their defense to account for not being able to simply drive their player towards Green when Green is most of the way out to the 3-point line so that Siakim can't use his first step to open a seam if he gets the ball? Are the other players ready to do the switching or doubling they will need to do because Green isn't able to roam the paint to the same extent?
Maybe GSW can make the leap, transcending their individual tendencies, and learning to play as a true team; maybe they can't. But we get to watch them try, and that means we get to watch some incredible games this June one way or the other, and it means the Raptors have a much better chance than most bookies and many talking heads have given them to win the championship.
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