Pregame: Damian Lillard and Steph Curry Duel As Trail Blazers Host Warriors
Opponent: Golden State Warriors (19-16 overall, 6-4 last 10 games)
Offensive Rating: 109.6 (21st)
Defensive Rating: 108.5 (fourth)
Net Rating: +1.1 (10th)
Where: Moda Center (Portland)
When: 7:00 p.m. (PST)
Broadcast: ESPN
Point Spread: Golden State -2
Moneyline: Golden State -136, Portland +116
Over/Under: 234
Injuries
- Portland: Zach Collins (out), Harry GIles III (out), C.J. McCollum (out), Jusuf Nurkic (out)
- Golden State: Marquesse Chriss (out), Klay Thompson (out)
Primer: The Trail Blazers, shocker, score 14.1 points fewer per 100 possessions with Damian Lillard off the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass. The only player in basketball to make a more positive impact on his team's offensive efficiency? Steph Curry, whose 115.4 offensive rating is a whopping 20.7 better than the Warriors' mark with him on the bench.
Conventional wisdom outside Rip City is that Curry remains a better offensive player than Lillard, and the discrepancy between their top-two net offensive ratings helps explain why. Lillard has publicly blanched about calls for him to do more work off the ball offensively, questioning why Portland wouldn't leverage the greatest strength of his game to its utmost extent. Curry, on the other hand, has helped revolutionize basketball even without the rock in his hands, becoming one of the most dangerous off-ball movers and screeners the game has ever seen.
The Warriors assist on nearly 70 percent of their baskets with Curry on the court, per NBA.com/stats, not because he's running ball screen after ball screen into defenses geared toward stopping him like Lillard. Instead, Golden State constantly leverages Curry's threat as basketball's best shooter with cuts and screens away from the ball that panic defenders and create easy scoring opportunities for his teammates.
Curry took just one three-pointer and scored only three points in the first quarter of the Warriors' win over the Charlotte Hornets last week. But Golden State scored 36 points and doled out 18 assists in the opening period anyway, taking constant advantage of the fear and confusion Curry instills in defenses with slipped screens and backdoor cuts.
Note who threw that alley-oop bullet, by the way. Draymond Green has never been less of a scoring threat in his career, but remains an effective offensive player for the most part because of his time-honed synergy with Curry.
One way for defenses to limit Curry's influence would be to rove off Green, shrinking the floor and daring him to shoot, right? Wrong. Leaving Green only further activates him as a passer and screener. Even when the ball is forced from Curry's hands, Green still finds a way to briefly free him for good looks. Anything less than full defensive attention and commitment when Curry and Green are on the floor is a recipe for disaster.
Curry exploded for a career-high 61 points the last time these teams met despite Terry Stotts bringing Enes Kanter beyond the three-point line to help corral him in pick-and-roll. Expect the Blazers to deploy a similar strategy on Wednesday, committing multiple defenders to Curry at the point of attack while daring the likes of Green, Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre to beat them from the outside.
Derrick Jones Jr. will get the start on Curry, but Portland is likely to switch screens across the first four positions. A potential x-factor is the efficacy of the Blazers' small-ball second unit, especially now that Nassir Little is a part of it. Golden State doesn't have a center who can punish a smaller frontcourt on the glass. Switching one through five and going small might ignite Curry in isolation, but that's a better result than him going off while his teammates feast on a numbers advantage behind the play.
The Warriors' defense is real. Wiggins isn't a true stopper, but has the length and short-area quickness to stick with Lillard when engaged. Golden State also has several other viable options to throw at Lillard even before accounting for Green, arguably the smartest help defender in all of basketball. Green won't wreck Portland's offense in the highlight-reel manner LeBron James did last weekend, but looms even larger as a backline defender on a possession-by-possession basis.
Bottom Line: Three-point shooting will tip the scales in this one, and not just because of shots launched by Lillard and Curry. With both defenses set out to stop the opposing team's superstar floor general, guys like Wiggins, Oubre, Robert Covington and Jones will have every opportunity to make them pay. It's a make-or-miss league, the saying goes, and Portland's role players – streaky as they can be – are a bit better shooters than Golden State's.