WARRIORS PRACTICE FACILITY, OAKLAND, CA — Two nights ago at the Toyota Center in Houston, the Houston Rockets were busy disposing of the San Antonio Spurs. While the Spurs played without center Tiago Splitter, who was nursing tightness in his right calf, and Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, who were resting on the second game of a back-to-back, James Harden was having his way scissoring through the San Antonio defense.
Up 78-49 with two minutes to go in the third quarter, Harden got an outlet from Donatas Motiejunas, who rebounded a miss at the rim by the Spurs, and came charging down the court in the early offense, as if he were a bull set free on the streets of Pamplona.
San Antonio point guard Corey Joseph found himself back-pedaling towards his own paint, hoping to provide some resistance to Harden’s dominant left-hand, while Boris Diaw hustled back as fast as he could to protect the paint.
And then it happened.
Harden took a big stride towards his dominant left, Joseph bit, then Harden took another more monstrous step back to the right, shielding off Diaw, for the easy layup.
Eurostep, activated.
“That’s not fair,” said TNT color analyst Reggie Miller on the air, “It’s just not fair.”
The NBA Twitter-verse was set afire. Coach Nick of Basketball Breakdown, a video scouting site that studies the plays of the NBA’s teams, said, “Not sure how I’d coach defending the Euro-Step in the open court.”
“Guys try to anticipate James going one way and then he Euro-Steps back to the right,” Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said yesterday after practice, “He’s clever because if you don’t go with him to the left, he’ll just keep going. If you do go with him, he steps back.”
“If it’s in the half court, you hope you’ve got a wall built in front of him.”
For Golden State tonight, that wall’s name is center Andrew Bogut.
“Well, it’s tough because he’s usually coming at me,” said Warriors center Andrew Bogut, “Usually when he gets by his man or it’s a screen-and-roll, it leaves Harden one-on-one with the big for a couple of seconds. So you’ve just got to make sure you keep your hands up, 1) because he gets a lot of easy free throws just from swinging the ball through and 2) just try to back up and up and make him shoot that pull up jumper or floater.”
Kerr added that there’s another problem: “You’ve got some help and then you can, in theory, chase the shooter off the line, once James makes the pass, but theory is a lot more difficult than practice.”
Klay Thompson, who will have to guard Harden tonight when the Warriors pay a visit to the Toyota Center, gave us a few tips, too.
“You try and read it. Read and react,” Thompson said, “Don’t put your hands down because he’s really good at drawing fouls and playing through the contact. So you just want to keep your hands back as much as possible and just try to make him take contested twos.”
Ahh, so hands up if you’re a big, hands back if you’re a guard, and if you’re not guarding him, fly at the shooter to whom he passes.
“The answer is, it’s really hard,” said Kerr.
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