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LA Clippers vs. Golden State Warriors: Should the Clippers Trap Steph Curry?
At this precise moment, the Golden State Warriors are the best team in basketball, and Steph Curry is arguably the best player in basketball. If things stay the way they are, Curry will almost certainly take home his 3rd MVP award. While the season is still young, Steph and the Warriors have been silencing doubters with each passing game.
The Warriors are currently 17-2, and possess the league's best record and point differential by a significant margin. Even with the Phoenix Suns winning 15-straight games, the Warriors have a point differential that is 6 points per game higher than Phoenix. In order to get here, wins must come by large margins, and losses must come by slim margins. So far this season, the Warriors have had both. Their two losses have come by just 5 total points, and they are averaging a +15.6 point differential in wins. Combine those two together, and you get a dominant team by every possible metric.
How does this relate to Sunday's matchup with the Clippers? Well, despite falling to the Warriors earlier this season, the Clippers lost by just two points. So far, that is the slimmest margin of victory the Warriors have had in any game this season. At the end of the day, a win is a win; however, the Clippers coming within a possession of a win over Golden State in October creates some increased anticipation for this game on Sunday.
Steph Curry was absolutely dominant in that game, opening up with 25 points in the first quarter on 100% shooting. It was the first time a player had scored 25 points in a quarter while remaining perfect from the field since Steph Curry himself did it last season. Before then, it had not been done since Klay Thompson in 2015. Steph finished with 45, including 10 in the 4th quarter to help close out the game.
The Clippers were without Nicolas Batum and Kawhi Leonard in this game, which is important to mention, because both will miss this game as well. Batum is still in the league's health and safety protocols, and Kawhi is still months away from a return as he recovers from ACL surgery. With these two sidelined in the season opener, the Clippers opted to defend Steph Curry with several different players. Terance Mann guarded him most, then it was Eric Bledsoe and Paul George getting a bulk of the assignment. As was evident by Steph's final line, none of these matchups worked.
As it pertains to Sunday, despite what Steph did to them in October, the Clippers' game plan should not be focused on shutting down Steph Curry with an aggressive trap. The primary reason why they should avoid this strategy, is because it creates problems similar to the ones that were evident in Tuesday's loss against the Dallas Mavericks. These are not last year's Warriors. Double and triple-teaming Steph Curry no longer forces the ball into the hands of incompetent players. Similar to what happened once the Clippers aggressively trapped Luka Doncic on Tuesday, attempting to eliminate Steph will create problems that the Clippers are simply not equipped to combat.
The Toronto Raptors learned this the hard way last week. Head coach Nick Nurse is notorious for attempting to eliminate the opposing team's best player, and he opted to deploy a box-and-one strategy against Steph Curry last week. The defensive strategy did its job, resulting in just 10 field goal attempts for Curry; however, it also came with a 15-point loss. Andrew Wiggins had 32 points on 6-8 from three, and Jordan Poole had 33 points on 8/11 from three. Both Steph Curry and Draymond Green had 8 assists each, showing why aggressively and consistently trapping Steph is no longer the most effective strategy.
Along with Curry's elite passing ability, Draymond Green is one of the most savvy playmakers in all of basketball. With Draymond as the roll-man following a screen for Curry, defenses are allowing him to facilitate from the middle of the floor if they trap Steph after the initial screen. In the past, the strategy at this point has been to force Draymond to be a scorer, by staying home defensively and not bringing weak-side help. The problem with this strategy now, is that Draymond is actually making shots inside the paint.
So far this season, Draymond is shooting 72.8% within 10-feet of the basket. Last season, he was just 55% on these shots, and the season before, he was just 41.3%. This is a massive improvement, and one that eliminates one of the most prevalent strategies that has been deployed over the last two seasons, which is making Draymond score as the roll-man. With Draymond this efficient within 10-feet, forcing him to score is counterproductive; however, making him a playmaker is no better. Long story short, trapping Steph Curry is not the answer.
Clippers head coach Ty Lue admitted after the loss to Dallas that he likely overreacted by trapping Luka Doncic after he made a couple of threes. While Steph Curry is obviously a much better shooter than Doncic is, the logic should remain the same. Forcing a team without two of their three best wing defenders to recover defensively after aggressively trapping Steph Curry seems impractical. There is no perfect solution when going against arguably the greatest offensive weapon in NBA history, but without Nicolas Batum and Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers are probably better off playing Steph straight-up, and living with the results.
This is primarily what the Clippers did in their season opener against Golden State. Despite Steph's first-quarter explosion, they never sent much of a trap. One could argue that they should have, considering Steph hurt them in that final frame, but they ultimately lost by just two points in game that Reggie Jackson and Luke Kennard combined for just 4/14 from three.
Basketball, and sports in general, are unpredictable. All of this analysis could become irrelevant with outlier performances and other unexpected factors; however, as things currently stand, the Clippers' best chance at a win on Sunday does not require aggressively trapping Steph Curry.
