The NBA Finals That Revived A Dynasty

Hello everybody! The Warriors hang on to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder and cap off an amazing road trip. I love these three variations they ran of the relay pick and roll. This is the vanilla relay pick and roll. Jonathan Kaminga steps up to set a screen for Steph and then Kaminga is going to roll to the basket. It's often tricky to get a pass over the top to the roller from this angle, especially with two defenders here ready to interfere. So in a relay pick and roll, Steph is going to pass it to Draymond and then Draymond is going to have this nice open angle to pass to Jonathan Kaminga. Steph relays it to Draymond. JK with an absolutely perfect cut here. Now we do have two defenders rotating into the paint to stop this dunk, but Kaminga just slices through them like butter. Here's an extra nice angle. There's the relay. These two defenders rotate, but Kaminga has a slender but very real lane to the basket. To start the second half, the Warriors run a slightly different version of the relay pick and roll. This part's the same. Gary Payton II is going to set a pick for Steph. Draymond is going to camp out here as the relay man. It's very hard to beat an NBA defense twice the same way. And this time, good reaction time covering this roll. And so this relay pass is not there. But if you look very carefully, something is different about this formation. In the vanilla relay pick and roll, there's a shooter here and a shooter here. And now what happened to the shooter over here? Let's go back. So as Gary Payton steps up to set this screen, DeAnthony Melton in the corner starts cutting along the baseline. And DeAnthony Melton's defender signals to Wiggins' defender that he's got to watch out for this guy cutting to the corner. Andrew Wiggins sets a screen on his own man so DeAnthony Melton can go behind. Draymond sees GP2 is covered, goes to the second option, which is a simple pass to DeAnthony Melton. Yeah, he missed it, but that was a great shot. The Warriors don't give up on the play. Nice effort from GP2 to get his hand on this rebound. Taps it to Wiggins. Wiggins looking around for the open man. A happy Steph Curry. And this is a real bang bang play, but Steph does end up getting an and one free throw. Okay, OKC is making a furious comeback. The Warriors go back to the second version of the relay pick and roll. Here's a mini quiz. What's about to happen in this play? Just like last time, Gary Payton the second is going to set this screen for Steph. Steph is going to relay the pass to Draymond. Underneath, DeAnthony Melton is not going to stay in this corner. He's going to cut through to the other side. Let's focus on DeAnthony Melton. His defender is alert to this, and he starts yelling and pointing. Look out, this guy's coming. This guy's going to get a pin and screen. And to the very last second, he's yelling, yelling at his teammate. And he's so insistent that he doesn't even realize that GP2 has already cut through and gotten the relay pass. And as the dunk unfolds, just look at the body language of Shea Gilgis Alexander. Look at how accusatory his arm is pointing back. You've been nagging me, but remove the splinter in your own eye first. The Warriors wanted Jerry Stackhouse to clean up their transition defense. This is a three on three, but when you've got the defense backpedaling, it's quite a dangerous situation. DeAnthony Melton lets the attacker go free to the wing, which seems counterintuitive. It's because the principle of the new Warriors transition defense is to pick up the attackers as far from the basket as possible, but also have one person dedicated to protecting the paint. And if that means leaving this guy completely open from three, then that's life. And because Melton is here and not here, that means that Isaiah Joe can't drive by the closeout. And it means Wiggins can get closer to Isaiah Joe. So Joe reads this quickly and throws it over to his teammate, which means DeAnthony Melton now has to bust his butt getting out to the open three-point shooter. And this is a fantastically effective closeout. That's the end of the fast break. Shea Gilgis Alexander sides up Draymond. I think Draymond is dying for Shea to test him. OKC decides to try to do more than an ISO. Here we have the side screen on Steph, so he can't come out to guard the spot-up shooter on the wing. Steph signals to Jonathan Kaminga, cover this guy. I've got to stay with this cutter. JK puts an arm out to make incidental contact with the cutter, which is principle of stackhouse defense. Smack every cutter. And now the Warriors have left another three-point shooter open. But that's just a built-in feature of the defense. Kaminga has to bust his butt getting out to the three-point shooter, which he does. JK's strongly overplaying him to go to his left. As soon as he's funneled the person baseline, the next man in position has to give aggressive help right at the block, even if it's Steph Curry. So that's the stackhouse defense for you. High risk, send heavy help to the ball, and force them to make a play. Here we've got two defenders guarding three, Thunder. Theoretically, this is bad for the Warriors. I mean, you've got one player springing free, Isaiah Joe still hanging out completely open at the three-point line, and one baseline cutter ready to catch the ball. Everyone feels open, and yet the Warriors say, OK, I dare you to make the pass. The Anthony Melton is doing something very clever here. Right now, the ball handler is completely behind Steph. He cannot see that the Anthony Melton is here. All he can see is his open teammate. The Anthony Melton is suckering him into throwing this pass. You can almost hear the shark music. The Anthony Melton says, I believe you have my property. Yoink. Now it's off to the races. Steph ends up trailing the play completely open. His defender is wandering around wondering who to cover. The Anthony Melton hits the corner. Wiggins knows no one ever got fired for throwing it to Steph Curry. This is a heroic attempt to recover. Steph gives a little up fake, throws in the side, Steph. Let's wrap up with a celebration audit. As the ball is in the air, Lindy Waters III starts moving his hands up to his face. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the world's first premature night-night celebration. He even beats Steph to the night-night. Steph coming in with the official night-night. Santos has also kind of come in with the night-night pretty quick on the trigger. Looks good. And Steph acknowledging Draymond Green, and he throws in just a little quick subliminal night-night. Draymond appears to be trying to innovate here. I think this is the world's first stank face night-night celebration, but now Steph is putting him in a tricky situation. He's coming in with the side five. Is Draymond going to break up his stank face night-night in order to dap up his colleague of so many years? And look at that. With the wisdom of Solomon, Draymond uses his right hand to go for the side five, but he keeps up the night-night status with his left hand. Beautiful. And he does not break character. He looks as grumpy as ever. In fact, I like how he throws the side five and then he kind of looks away like he's saying, man, do you know what hour it is? You are disturbing my sleep. Which part of night-night do you not understand? Thank you, Draymond, for your full commitment to the bit. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. It really helps the And if you didn't enjoy this video, I promise I'll do better next time.