The Warriors unveiled their new high-tech San Francisco practice facility this week. As part of the public introduction, ESPN was given a Steph Curry-led video tour, complete with an interview. In it, Rachel Nichols asked Curry about a recent Kevin Durant comment that generated buzz.
Durant discussed about 46 topics during a Wall Street Journal summer interview. One of them was the Warriors offense, that motion attack blended around Durant’s individual brilliance.
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“It only works to a certain point,” he told the WSJ. “We can totally rely on only our system for maybe the first two rounds. Then the next two rounds we’re going to have to mix in individual play.”
The quote, attached to a note that Durant “wanted to go someplace where he’d be free to hone (his) improvisational game throughout the regular season,” was widely consumed and relayed as criticism, a parting shot at Steve Kerr and the Warriors about their strategic priorities.
It wasn’t. An acknowledgment of fact, agreed upon by all involved parties, isn’t an insult or barb. Durant just said something Kerr and Curry and Draymond Green and Durant himself regularly vocalized during their three-year (extremely successful) balancing act.
Go back to the 2016 summer, when this partnership initially formalized. The Warriors had just ripped through the league for a record 73 regular-season wins. But traditional playoff physicality and focus and referee leniency wore them thin.
The Thunder’s length and strength softened them up, delivering the Cavaliers a wobbly version to knock out. Cleveland muscled them around that series — bumping cutters, grappling off-ball, swarming Curry. They held the Warriors to 97, 101 and 89 points those final three games.
It was a setback Kerr regularly referenced in the Durant years, a lesson to him that — no matter how historically his offense shredded the Suns and Magic and Kings and even the great October through April defenses — when it gets thorny in May and June, a 7-foot bucket getter can wipe away all weaknesses.
Guess what? It worked exactly to script. Durant mostly melded into the Warriors’ system during that first regular season together — showing the off-ball and defensive growth he’d hoped for when he made the free-agency jump — and then, when it got dicey, Kerr redirected Durant to get loose.
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Cleveland was their only 2017 playoff challenger. That Cavaliers team, many believe, was better than the 2016 version. Didn’t matter. The same physical defensive strategy would no longer work.
Durant had only scored 35-plus twice since December. He hadn’t needed to. But in the 4-1 disposal of the Cavaliers, he went for 31, 33, 35, 38 and 39 — the night’s leading scorer all five times. The season’s signature shot wasn’t a ping, ping, ping passing display to a back-cutting Durant. It was a possession that included zero passes and four dribbles, all by Durant, cruising right into a pull-up 27-foot left-wing bomb.
And everyone celebrated. It was the culmination of a perfectly executed plan, the fusion of legendary player into legendary team. The Warriors helped Durant sharpen up the smaller parts of his game, while Durant delivered his innate individual greatness at the Warriors’ most vulnerable moments.
“You know how we play,” Kerr said during the 2018 Finals. “We want to keep the ball moving. But, obviously, Kevin is the ultimate luxury. Because a play can break down and you just throw him the ball and he can get you a bucket as well as anyone on Earth.”
He then again referenced that 2016 heartbreak.
“But when you think about a couple years ago, we were in the Finals and we couldn’t quite get over the hump. Kevin’s a guy who puts you over the hump.”
That never stopped being the case. The Warriors motion offense, all three seasons, put up historic efficiency ratings. Then Durant, all three postseasons (until the fateful injury), delivered massive individual scoring nights when needed most.
KD averaged 30.4 points in that seven-game Rockets series in 2018. He popped the Cavaliers for 43 in the competitive Game 3 win that essentially sealed their second straight title together. He went for 38, 33, 45 and 50 when the Clippers got first-round frisky this past April. Had the body held up, not many doubt they were on their way to a three-peat, powered by his nightly scoring barrages.
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So success wasn’t the problem. The style of getting there just became the issue. Curry had some ankle troubles in Durant’s second season. He missed 31 games. That left KD to operate more like the OKC version for long stretches.
Coaches, that season, sensed a reversion to old habits, an increased desire to go off-script. When you have a legendary skill set, it can be fun as hell to use it, especially in the dull winter months, when the nightly results didn’t exactly change the Warriors’ title odds one way or the other.
But it’s a coach’s job to keep his team sharp. Kerr’s basketball ethos tells him the best way to do that is to ensure everyone remains involved. That’s particularly true with a team built like his was, loaded with high-level passers (Curry, Green, Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala, David West) at every spot in the rotation. The ping, ping, ping 300-passes-a-game style is the best way to maximize their strengths.
This personnel-based concept isn’t one Durant doesn’t get. He understands it far better than most of us.
Go back with me to 2015. I covered the Thunder at the time. They were in New York early in the season. Billy Donovan, in his first season, was trying to tweak OKC’s offense, to generate more ball movement. The pass-happy Spurs and Warriors were hot. The Thunder weren’t. Durant was getting regularly peppered with questions about the need for more motion.
“Look, we’re not the San Antonio Spurs,” Durant said. “We’re not going to make 30 passes in a possession. We’re not that. Of course people want us to be that. That’s great basketball, don’t get me wrong, but we’re not that. We’ve got guys that can score. We’ve got two guys on this team that can get a bucket.”
Durant knew his Thunder weren’t coming off the bench with Boris Diaw and Manu Ginóbili or Iguodala and Livingston. He was flanked by Andre Roberson and Serge Ibaka, Thabo Sefolosha and Kendrick Perkins before that — defensive specialists without much creativity to their offensive game.
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So it was most often better to let Durant or Russell Westbrook cook in stagnation than try to whip up something the ingredients were incapable of producing. It never led to a title, but it wasn’t exactly unsuccessful either. Operating that way, the Thunder were a powerhouse for a decade.
“Drive, kick, make the right play,” Durant continued that day in New York. “Simple basketball. We just don’t need to make five or six passes before we do it sometimes. And that’s not a knock against us, I don’t think.”
The allure of the Warriors motion offense, easing his burden, is what partly drove him to Oakland. Three years later, the allure of what he once had, stylistically — an isolation partner in Westbrook then, Kyrie Irving now — appears to be partly what drove him to Brooklyn. Two titles in the bag, it’s quite possible (and understandable) that he finds that method more personally fun during the NBA marathon.
That, I thought, was the mini revelation within the WSJ article — not him vocalizing what we already knew about the Warriors offense, but rather his paraphrased desire to be on a team where his “improvisational” skills are more needed in the regular season.
Which brings it back to Curry’s response this week to the Nichols question. Aggregated headlines categorized it as a “fire back” at Durant’s “criticism.” I don’t think it was that. It comes around the 2-minute mark. Curry squirms a bit, which would indicate displeasure despite his typically diplomatic words.
But he knows what Durant means. He’s lived it. Curry (and the most vocal part of his fan base) sometimes daydream about what he could do with 35 isolation sets a night. I remember chatting with him about just that during the historic, high-usage MVP chase between Westbrook and James Harden a couple seasons back.
“We talked about it a lot during our three-year run,” he told Nichols. “The word sacrifice, in terms of playing a little bit differently than we all have been accustomed to over the years. We all want to play iso ball, at the end of the day. But I’d rather have some championships.”
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If anything, Curry’s discomfort with the topic may come from his understanding of the modern conflict-obsessed news cycle. The Warriors have tried very hard to keep this split up as amicable as possible. Durant’s done his part, too, freeing them of blame for his Achilles injury.
The comment about the offense wasn’t a criticism. It was an honest, agreed-upon assessment. This basketball divorce, so far, has gone much smoother than his with the Thunder. They’re the one still catching real jabs.
(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)
