Advanced Scouting: San Antonio Spurs at Golden State Warriors

by Scott Sereday

San Antonio Spurs at Golden State Warriors 9:30 CST November 30, 2010

SRS ranks:

Golden State: -5.23 (25th)
San Antonio: 8.43 (1st)

Key Player Statistics (courtesy of 82games.com (effective November 29, 2010) and basketballvalue.com (effective November 26, 2010):

To this point in the season, the Warriors have done much better with David Lee than without. David Lee returned from an eight-game absence due to an elbow infection on Saturday.

Most valuable/utilized lineups:
Curry,Ellis,D.Wright,Lee,Biedrins +83 in 118 MP

Preferred method to create shots: Ellis/Curry in the pick and roll

Monta Ellis is explosive, creative and flat-out exciting to watch. As exciting as he is, his efficiency has swayed back and forth from 117 in 2007/08 to 99 in each of the last two years and back up to 111 in the current season. Although he hasn’t always been efficient, he can certainly create shots in tough situations. He’s been the Warriors top option on isolation plays the past couple years and he shares the ballhandling responsibilities with Stephen Curry in the pick and roll game.

Overall, the pick and roll is where the Warriors derive most of their half court offense. This season, the Warriors are the only team with 2 players in the top 18 in points derived from the pick and roll.

Ellis and Curry share the pick and roll workload, but each runs the set in different ways. Both are very creative and will often make their move before the pick is set (especially Ellis). Ellis is more explosive and aggressive getting to the rim, but will also throw a few unforced turnovers. He often leaves his feet and throws a bad pass.

Stephen Curry is not as explosive as Ellis, but is every bit as slick. He is far more deliberate than Ellis and won’t take as many difficult shots or create as many easy ones. Curry prefers to pull up often and is a fine shooter. On the season, the Warriors have scored 0.91 PPP on pick and roll derived possessions headed by Curry and 0.85 on such plays run by Ellis. Last year, both players were around 0.94 PPP.

David Lee has yet to be fully introduced into this play set for the Warriors, but last year he was elite as the roll man. Synergy sports tallied 462 points for Lee on pick and rolls as the roll man. Amare Stoudemire was the only other player with more than 255 such points. To this point in the season, Lee has only scored 18 points in this role. In addition, his efficiency has dropped from 1.31 points per possession to 0.78.

Appropriate Spurs counter: Make them pass

With Coach Nelson, the Warriors were regularly the fastest paced team in the league. The players are largely the same under Coach Keith Smart, but the pace has been much more normal this season. One article earlier in the (pre)season discussed how the Warriors new offense is inspired by Jerry Sloan’s offense. However, unlike the Jazz who thrive on cuts and passes, the Warriors weakness in the pick and roll this year has been when the ball handler have been forced to give the ball up.

It’s interesting that the Warriors were respectable at passing off of the pick and roll last year, but have struggled in that aspect so greatly this year. Last year, the Warriors ranked 11th in points per possession (0.99 PPP) on plays where the ballhandler passes out of the pick and roll. This year, they are dead last at 0.73 PPP.

In the preseason, there were signs that the Warriors players were struggling to learn the offense and based on numerous errant passes out of the pick and roll, there is still work to do. Ellis and Curry haven’t seemed to learn where all the other players will be on the court at all times.

It hasn’t helped that David Lee has missed significant time so far, but even when he has been in the lineup, the Warriors haven’t been able to utilize him like expected in the pick and roll.

In the specific case of Monta Ellis, a good strategy to me would be to make him think he has a play and then applying timely double teams. He tends to over-commit and make a bad passes.

Defensive Weakness: be aggressive: draw fouls and target Ellis on isolations

No one has allowed more free throw attempts per game than the Warriors this season. A large part of the reason has been their struggles in defending isolation plays. In particular, Monta Ellis has ranked in the bottom 25% on such plays for the last few seasons. In total, the Warriors allow 0.98 PPP in isolation plays. The Detroit Pistons allow the second most PPP on such play types with 0.93 PPP. The Spurs are more than capable of abusing the Warriors on isolations with Ginobili, Parker, and Hill.

The Warriors have also had struggles defending the post, ranking 27 in PPP on post possessions. Last year they were dead last. This could be a good game to show Duncan some love in the post. Duncan has really struggled in the post this year, dropping from 1.06 PPP to 0.93. However, since the fast pace might not be the best fit for Duncan, this may be a good opportunity for the Spurs to get Splitter more acclimated to the offense with some post ups.

Conclusion

The Warriors haven’t played as well as their 8-9 record indicates. In fact, they have a worse SRS than they did last year when they finished 26-56. However, they have performed better with David Lee, who has recently returned from injury.

Even with Lee back, and home court advantage, the Spurs are simply a far better team than the Warriors and have a strong chance to pick up win number 15.