The game, in tweets — a summary

Curry taken for granted watch: only 7th game in history with 42 PTS 8 AST 1 TOV & 68% FG%. 8th ever 42/8 on 3 FTA. 9th ever 42/8 in 35 min. — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

This feels like a good time to repost my Curry For MVP piece. https://t.co/OlQuDEUVFJ https://t.co/NiYVtGCnRB — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) March 30, 2017

The game, in tweets — the details

Maybe an open Curry 3 is about a 75% * 3 pts = 2.25 expected pts, higher than a contested dunk, but this still feels like a bad decision. https://t.co/rRp69TDeBo — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

Zaza is Gortat's favorite throw pillow. Unfortunately for KD. — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

Nice of MVP 2.0 alien to possess Curry's body tonight. 12 for 17 and all 12 are season highlights. — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

I dunno what this is about, but I know if Dray were chewing out KD and Kerr on the bench, the cameras wouldn't cut and pan away like this. https://t.co/lYYI3OXxWg — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

Another MVP 2.0-ish Curry thing: 42 on 22 shots and 3 FTs. Could have easily got 50 with more shots. Instead, got 8 AST, Dray trip-doub. — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

Curry spins Gortat like a record, baby ... right round, right round

The highlight part of this play is Stephen Curry faking Gortat out of his boots. But the play begins with the Warriors’ new standard way of running wing pick-and-rolls. This began late last season when the Spurs inspired every team in the league to defend the W’s offense by switching assignments on all screens. If done smoothly (no small task), switching defuses a lot of the W’s plays and turns them into stagnant isolations. So the W’s developed next-level versions of their plays to counter the switching.

For instance, the humble wing pick-and-roll can be defused by switching. So the W’s began running a different version that had two elements built-in to discourage switching. Let’s see one of the earliest examples (from the innocent days of March 2016).

The pattern to notice is this:

Curry swings the ball across. The eventual screener (here, Draymond Green) dribble pitches to swap places to end up on the far side. The small (here, Harrison Barnes) on Curry’s side runs cross-court from the corner to pre-screen for Green (sometimes called a “ram screen”). Green runs across the court to set a quick screen for Curry.

So, #4 makes it so Green’s defender is behind the play so he can’t easily switch the screen, #3 makes the defender even farther behind, and the fact that the small runs a long distance means the small’s defender can’t easily switch the pre-screen. In fact, the switch does eventually happen in the pick-and-roll, but the switch is forced to happen on Curry’s terms, where the big is scrambling to backpedal to stay with Curry.

This is typically how the W’s get into a wing pick-and-rolls nowadays. There’s a similar version of the play, even more common, where Curry ducks in and out the other side (“Motion Weak”... this one is “Motion Strong” because Curry stays on the ball side), and gets the screen from far away. You’ll see JaVale McGee run that a lot.

So let’s examine tonight’s play. It’s the exact same play, so you’ll see Zaza Pachulia (eventual screener) dribble pitch to swap places with Klay Thompson, and then Patrick McCaw will come up to pre-screen Pachulia, who then runs cross-court to set a pick for Curry. This will make a switch very difficult, and Pachulia’s defender, Marcin Gortat, will end up having to pick up Curry on his heels, trailing his drive.

Curry runs by Gortat like a pylon, but he doesn’t want to risk having Gortat block his layup from behind. So Curry quickly relocates to the corner where he’ll have an isolation on Gortat. Curry tosses it to McCaw, who recognizes the mismatch immediately so he clears out and hands the ball back. Curry already saw Gortat go up on his first shot fake, so he tries it again. It works great, and Gortat gets up in the air. Curry then throws the delicious fake pass which gets Gortat spinning further, and gets the bench jumping to their feet. He then finishes the highlight and triggers Andre Iguodala’s happy feet celebration.

On JaVale McGee breaking the unwritten rules

First, on this overblown outrage over JaVale McGee’s three in the closing seconds:

1. I don't think JVMG should have shot it. 2. End of opening night Spurs buttkicking of W's, Simmons dunked with 4 sec left. No drama. https://t.co/g8GfNX1Uut — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

Confirmed: just this season we have 3s shot up 10+, < 0:10 to go by: CLE 3x, BOS 2x. SAS shot 6 2s. https://t.co/COdd4bYEco https://t.co/HHdyNy9zEN — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

OH SNAP. I forgot to check the obvious thing. WAS shot 3s up 10+, 0:15 left THREE TIMES, including last week! https://t.co/8Q4dxp711l https://t.co/HHdyNy9zEN — Eric Apricot (@EricApricot) April 3, 2017

And, the cherry on top is my super cut of the late three-pointers the Wizards took in 2017 alone, when up by more than 20 points with less than 10 seconds to go. People in glass houses shouldn’t shove flagrantly.

By grabbing data from basketball-reference.com, I found in 2016-17, before Sunday’s game, that there were 118 plays such plays with less than 10 seconds, up by more than 10 points.

58 shot-clock violations (49%)

24 two-point shots (20%)

36 three-pt shots (31%)

So it’s not a hard and fast unwritten rule to take the shot clock violation, as it’s only followed about half the time.

Final thoughts

It’s great to see Shaun Livingston’s game coming back. He has been finding good spots in the offense to take that little 12-foot turnaround jump shot, and that seems to energize his defense.

In fact, I was going to write about Livingston’s plays, but Curry’s night just kept getting more ludicrous as it went. On that note, here are the complete highlights of Curry’s night, which I won’t annotate, because it’s boring to read me writing “how did he do that” and “come on man” over and over.

Also, I just cannot stop calling them the Washington Bullets, which my kids give me crap about. Change is hard for old brains: I also often call the Nets the New Jersey Nets.

If you want to read more video breakdowns — one for well-nigh every Warriors’ win since 2015 — check out the Explain One Play Mega-Index, searchable and sortable by player, play, team and date.