?#SplashBrothers Stephen Curry And Klay Thompson Get Ready For Their New Orleans Pelicans Matchups

WARRIORS PRACTICE FACILITY, OAKLAND, CA — The Golden State Warriors are set to face the New Orleans Pelicans in tonight’s 2015-16 NBA season opener.

Over the past few days, we observed Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson practicing drills for likely one-on-one matchups against the Pelicans’ Jrue Holiday and Eric Gordon, respectively.

Holiday stands 6’4″, but he is not necessarily an imposing physical presence, and so Curry has been seen practicing dribbling past the high pick-and-roll and dealing with a trailing defender:

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Here, assistant coach Ron Adams purposely fouls Curry to simulate what kind of body contact Curry might be able to induce:

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Here’s the full video of each:

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Meanwhile, Thompson stands 6’7″ while Gordon is on the smaller side for an NBA shooting guard at 6’4″. Therefore, expect Thompson to post up against Gordon:

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Thompson also told us that he’s been working on more pump fakes. Here’s an example of a “fly by”:

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Ethan Sherwood Strauss wrote an in-depth analysis at ESPN.com on how the Pelicans, with former Warriors coaches Alvin Gentry and Darren Erman at the helm, might want to defend Curry:

Draymond Green, who has started to exploit switches by punishing smaller guards in the post, has expressed that Gentry might try this blitzing. It was the Clippers’ tactic against Golden State back when Gentry was on their bench, and it suits Gentry’s philosophy of not letting the opponent’s best player beat you. My personal expectation is that we see a mix of coverages, including the Davis switch.
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If it happens, we get to see how Golden State’s offense has evolved — or hasn’t. It’s Curry’s preference to dance with the ball in these situations where he’s facing a big, to play the part of David slaying Goliath. Coach Steve Kerr eschews this iso-ball, cajoling Curry into moving the rock. “We have a philosophy that if teams want to switch bigs on Steph instead of going isolation basketball, we’d rather Steph just move it on and keep our flow of our offense going,” interim coach Luke Walton said. “Steve has a saying: ‘Everything comes out in the wash.'”
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What does “Everything comes out in the wash” mean? Without speaking for Kerr, I believe it means you find advantages if you move everyone around and run your offense. In the specific example of a big switched onto a smaller player, the entire defense can be discombobulated — a big is where a guard should be and a guard is where a big should be.
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“If Anthony Davis switches on [Curry] and we keep on moving, at some point Anthony Davis is a big, he’s going to want to help on somewhere else,” Walton explains. “Now you’re helping off of Steph Curry and that’s how we like to attack.”
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Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group filed this report:

Davis, who is 6-foot-10, switched to guarding the 6-3 Curry at times. It was a strategy that ultimately played into the Warriors’ hands as Davis expended much of his energy with the extra responsibility on defense.
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Curry said the topic came up during the USA Basketball minicamp in August with Davis and Monty Williams, who was fired as Pelicans coach after the series and replaced by Gentry.
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“Me, him and Monty were kind of joking, laughing about adjustments that they had made from game to game and how tired Anthony was every third or fourth quarter,” Curry said. “It’s kind of funny to hear conversations that they had on the other side, and it kind of validated some of the decisions we made.”
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(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via @poormanscommish)