LAS VEGAS, NV — Seventeen consecutive stops. Two-for-eighteen shooting. Those are the kind of eye-opening defensive statistics that the Golden State Warriors — no, not the world champion one with the best defensive ranking in the NBA, but the 2015 Summer League version — have held their opponents to in their last two playoff tournament games here.
The commitment to defense is also a by-product of the franchise’s new culture, the foundation laid by the Mark Jackson era and taken to new heights with the roster moves made by general manager Bob Myers and the strategies set forth by head coach Steve Kerr, assistant coach Ron Adams, and the rest of the Golden State coaching staff.
After yielding a field goal percentage of better than 50% to the Sacramento Kings, the Warriors put the clamps on and held the same Kings, whom they drew in the first round of the Summer League playoff tournament, to just 36.4% shooting, including those seventeen straight possessions without a basket.
A day later, Golden State’s Summer League team erased an early 13-2 deficit and held the 4th overall Draft pick Kristaps Porzingis and his New York Knicks to 15-for-69, or 21.7% shooting. The Knicks not only shot just 2-for-18 in the second quarter, but had a stretch of 14 consecutive missed field goals spanning the first and second quarters.
What’s been the formula for the Warriors, even as the team has been without 7’0″ rim-protector Ognjen Kuzmic, who left for Serbia earlier in the week to play for their national team?
High character and, quite simply, effort.
“Normally, I wouldn’t think you could do that in just four days, but the guys we have on this team are such good guys,” head coach Luke Walton told LetsGoWarriors. “Defense is usually not the fun part of basketball, especially in a summer league type of atmosphere.
“Normally, people just want to score. It says a lot about who these guys that they come out and compete that hard defensively each time.”
“That’s something they talked to us about when we first got here,” said the Warriors’ first-round Draft pick, power forward Kevon Looney. “That’s something that we hang our hat on. We’ve got some good athletes on the team and people that can really defend, like Aaron Craft. We follow his lead.”
Effort and character seem to go hand-in-hand.
“They like each other, they like playing for each other, and when you’ve got high-character guys like our staff put together here, that type of thing is possible,” said Walton. “Effort is everything on defense. You give a game plan and it could be terrible or it could be good, but if the effort’s not there, it won’t work.”
It all seems to be clicking for the Summer League Warriors, who are just three wins away from a second Summer League championship, but face an undefeated New Orleans Pelicans and scoring leader Seth Curry tonight in the semifinals.
The majority of this summer squad will go their separate ways in pursuing their professional basketball careers, and in a matter of just days, but the experience has been unforgettable.
“At first, I didn’t think it was going to be, like, everybody was going to be cool like this,” guard Aqeel Quinn told Warriors’ summer league radio broadcaster Kevin Danna, “but everybody’s turned into a family. Everybody’s getting to know each other off the court. It’s pretty cool.”
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account)
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