The Golden State Warriors coaching staff made a major adjustment last night in the team’s 101-84 Game 4 domination of the Memphis Grizzlies to tie the series up in the 2015 Western Conference Semifinals at 2-2.
The Warriors got off to a strong start and head coach Steve Kerr had Harrison Barnes guarding Zach Randolph (aka “Z-Bo”) while Andrew Bogut started assigned onto Tony Allen. For the most part, the adjustment worked.
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Aside from a pick-and-roll slip by Marc Gasol that resulted in a dunk, assisted by Mike Conley, the Grizzlies were relegated to open jump shots. Allen made one jumper, but also missed three wide-open treys. Conley did his part, however, canning two open treys off pick-and-rolls up top.
Allen ended up playing just 16 minutes, although today the Grizzlies reported that he would be questionable for Game 5 with his chronic hamstring injury. Whether or not Allen’s limited minutes in Game 4 was due to the chess match involved or his injury, or both, we may never know.
Allen scored just 4 points, was 2-for-9 from the field with 5 rebounds, and missed those 3 three-pointers.
“It really frustrated not only Tony Allen but I think it frustrated Z-Bo a little bit, too, because he didn’t really have room to work like he normally has and I think Harrison did a great job with what Coach asked him to do with Z-Bo and guys followed through with the game plan,” Draymond Green said in an interview with Tom Tolbert and Ray Ratto today on KNBR.
The genesis of the strategy was revealed in an interview by KNBR last night with Warriors assistant coach Luke Walton, who said that fellow assistant and defensive specialist Ron Adams hatched the idea even before Game 3, which the Grizzlies dominated.
“We’ve been having a lot of just long coaching staff meetings where it’s just brainstorming ideas back and forth. Ron threw out that idea a couple days ago and we kind of talked about it and we figured we might save it for later in the series, because we figured we’d been doing a good job on Zach and Marc with our size and our length,” said Walton. “Then when we got back to Memphis, the two of them in Game 3 were just monstrous and they play with that crowd behind them, and they really dominated that game.”
Kerr told reporters during media availability the day after Game 3 that the team had sat down together to watch the entirety of their loss and discuss adjustments.
“We needed to see why and what and how, so we’ve been in there for (what) seems like all day and we’re hashing it all out,” Kerr said to reporters at the team hotel. “We’ve presented them with some thoughts and a plan and we wanted to hear what they’d have to say and it was a good meeting to have those.”
“We saw the benefit of it right away,” Green added. “I wouldn’t necessarily say it didn’t catch us by surprise because it wasn’t like you just expected to walk into the film session to have Coach say, ‘Hey Bogut, guard Tony Allen; Harrison you got Z-Bo,’ but then once he broke down the game plan and what we wanted to do, it made perfect sense.”
The Grizzlies anticipated that the Warriors would double-team Randolph, but they were ill-prepared for the Golden State coaching staff’s “trick”.
The Warriors were not only able to keep the Grizzlies off-kilter on offense, but it overlapped into Golden State’s offensive rhythm.
“Tony Allen is a huge part of that team even if he doesn’t fill up the stat sheet,” said Walton. “Just his energy level, always getting under people’s skin, and making hustle plays. He gets that team playing with that toughness that makes them so good, so with him not on the court is definitely an advantage to us.”
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via SBNation/TheChronicle)
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