OAKLAND, Calif. — Steve Green, one of the planet’s foremost experts on the Golden State Warriors, seized the opportunity last month to do something he had never done: watch them play in person.

For three days at the start of training camp, Green grabbed a seat on a balcony at the team’s training facility here and fixed his forensic eye on what was happening below. He was not shocked when Stephen Curry, as a part of his shooting routine, sank 17 straight 3-pointers. Green was not surprised by the Warriors’ unselfishness when they scrimmaged.

But when Coach Steve Kerr had his staff arrange a set of traffic cones on the court, Green took notice. The Warriors, with the sort of single-minded focus that drove them to the N.B.A. championship last season, committed themselves to a no-frills dribbling drill, working their way around those cones. The drill would have been familiar to anyone who had played youth basketball, but Green had long ago dropped it from his own practices. Perhaps, he was realizing, that had been a mistake.

“Here are the greatest players in the world,” he said, “and they’re still working on the basics.”

Green, 64, is a decorated junior college coach, having won two national titles and more than 400 games at South Plains College in Levelland, Tex. But last season, he did something unorthodox: He scrapped his offense and copied the Warriors’ playbook by studying their games on television.