2014 Round 1 Game 6 Warriors vs Clippers Playoffs – Team Defense And Klay Thompson Post-Ups

2014 Round 1 Game 6 Warriors vs Clippers Playoffs – Team Defense And Klay Thompson Post-Ups (Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle)

After the Golden State Warriors defeated the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 6, a few other minor story lines emerged…

On Klay Thompson posting up (from pre-game, actually)

J.A. Adande of ESPN.com:

Why not utilize it more? Because it’s risky to stray too far from the normal flow of an offense, no matter how successful a breakout play can be. And the Warriors offense is at its best with the ball in Stephen Curry’s hands and the other players playing off the defense’s attention to him, not standing around watching one player work his matchup.
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“It’s something that we don’t want to overkill,” Thompson said at Warriors’ shootaround Thursday morning. “But if it’s working and I feel like I have a mismatch, I’m going to go to it. I try to go with it within the flow of the offense. If they send a double or something we’ve got easy looks at the rim on that.
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And no, there isn’t a sense in the locker room that Jackson is making this about himself. The players are making it about Jackson.
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“It’s our season on the line; it’s a lot of stuff on the line,” Green told CSN Bay Area in an on-court interview right after the game. “We’re gonna go battle for each other, we’re gonna go battle for Coach.”
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After Green had showered and changed and let his adrenaline slow down, the message stayed the same.
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“We hear the same things as everyone else,” Green said. “We love him and we support him.”
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An emotional O’Neal, contemplating the possible end of his career because of the knee injury, said: “It bothers us. I’m not going to lie. We won 51 games and there’s a lot of conversation about a new coach before the season’s even over with. It does bother us.”

On the Warriors’ team defense

Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group:

Still, with only forwards as their big men, the Warriors defended at an elite level. The Clippers shot 36.8 percent. Draymond Green gave Blake Griffin fits, as the Clippers All-Star needed 24 shots to get 17 points before fouling out.
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“I thought both teams played poorly,” Griffin said. “I think they just grinded it out more than us.”
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David Lee had been getting destroyed by the Clippers big men most of this series. Thursday, he fought back. His energy, his wrestling with DeAndre Jordan, helped the Warriors win the rebounding battles and kept Jordan from really hurting Golden State as he’s done in the Clippers’ three wins.
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Andre Iguodala took turns on J.J. Redick, Chris Paul and Jamal Crawford, and they were a combined 12 of 36 from the field.
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“We knew coming into this game that we had to battle,” Green said after totaling 14 points, 14 rebounds, five steals and four assists.

On the ugliness of the game

Al Saracevic of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Players fought for position relentlessly. It seemed that every trip down court, someone ended up on their rear end. Speights delivered a particularly hard foul on Clippers point guard Chris Paul with 7 minutes to go in the second quarter, dropping the hammer on the diminutive guard and earning a technical in the process.
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All you had to do is look at the foul count in the first half to get a sense of the carnage. The two teams combined for 30 personal fouls in the first two quarters.
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The resulting game was choppy, at best, with a seemingly endless parade of shooters heading to the foul line. For you football fans, it was more Ditka’s Bears than Walsh’s 49ers.
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“It wasn’t a very well-played game by either team …,” said Clippers coach Doc Rivers. “But I thought both teams played extremely hard. … Neither team shot the ball well. It was one of those hustle games.”