The Warriors coach Steve Kerr refers to the programming adjustments for match 7 against the rockets: “ finding the right combinations' ''
The Golden State Warriors Center Kevon Looney will probably be in the rotation of match 7 against the Houston Rockets on Sunday, coach Steve Kerr Tell to journalists SATURDAY. It is possible that striker Jonathan Kuminga also gets another blow.
For Looney, the work is simple: screen shooters open and fight with Steven Adams inside. Adams gave the Rockets 31 minutes almost impeccable in match 6 and, when he shared the court with his colleague Big Man Alperen Sangun, they were dominant on the boards.
“I trust Loon implicitly, on the basis of being together for 10 years, seeing him to play in so many these big games,” said Kerr. “So I would expect Loon to play more than this last night.”
The Warriors generally try to play big traditional like Adams out of the ground, and they could have done it successfully if Houston had simply put Adams on Draymond Green. Since Houston put Adams in the middle of A defense of the zone that Adams himself described as “bizarre”, Golden State could not remove it at the perimeter.
“What we have been able to do in the past is to put big in the pick-and-roll and this is generally how you play them from the ground,” said Kerr. “You put them in the pick-and-roll. But they are essentially in this hybrid area each time he is there and he manages the middle. It's a kind of 2-1-2, then they start to hunt Steph [Curry] around. I'm not sure they Know what they are doing, except stay stuck to Steph, then it just becomes a pseudo-zone. This is how they protect it, and it is very difficult to expose it in any way to bring it out of the ground. “”
After the defeat of the Warriors 115-107 in match 6, in which the Rockets carried out a 20-5 race at the beginning of the fourth quarter, Kerr coaches staff have a philosophical question to answer: is it better to fight against Houston's physicality with size and strength or shooting? Golden State pulled only 30.6% from the 3 -point fork on Friday, which did not exactly discourage the rockets from sticking to the area.
Looney, a big man without underwear, only played two minutes in match 6. He is essentially the opposite of Stretch Big Quinten Post, who has an average of 19.3 minutes in this series. He is not going to punish the Rockets area by making riders, but he could reduce some of the damage that ADAMS has done.
“The challenge of this series was to find the right combinations based on the attempt to carry out queues,” said Kerr. “If they will go from the area, as they have a lot, then we must have shots and spacing, but we must also stop at the other end, so we have to make our queues quite carefully.”
Golden State knows what it gets with Looney. Kuminga is No more joker. The 22 -year -old striker has mainly left the rotation since the last game of the regular season, and he did not make a strong argument for himself In the limited minutes, he obtained when Jimmy Butler was not available. Kerr said he loved the defense that Kuminga had played against Jalen Green in match 3, and looked open to give him another opportunity with the online season.
“The key is the combination around him,” Kerr told journalists. “We know that they are in the area enormously. Can we find the right combination with JK, with the shooting and the spacing we need and pass to expose the area? So, these are all the questions we ask. And I think I am very clear, the arrival of Jimmy made the combinations much more difficult for JK, and it is what was somehow. would be useful for him and for us.
If the rotation of the game 7 includes Looney and / or Kuminga, who comes out of the mixture? A candidate is posted, that Houston clearly considers a weak bond defensively. Another is Gary Payton II, who started match 6 but is listed as questionable for match 7 with an illness.
This series was full of schematic adjustments based on the range. Before the decisive game, however, Kerr said he thought that the biggest problems of the Warriors in match 6 were not locked up on the shooters after abandoning offensive rebounds and that emotion “emotionally late in the game.
“My biggest concern for [Game 7] is just our global emotional response to a night when we were really not ourselves, “he said.
If Looney plays a big role on Sunday, it could be part of it. He has already been in situations like this, and he knows exactly what his team needs him. Maybe it's logical to sacrifice a certain spacing for that.
