Sixers

Steph Curry Wizardry – Observations from Warriors 107, Sixers 96

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Apr 20th, 2021 · 9:15 AM EDT

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Sometimes you just tip your hat to a generational player that gets hot and smokes the opposition down the stretch.

Unfortunately it was the short-handed Sixers on the receiving end of a magical Steph Curry Monday night game. They didn’t have Ben Simmons or Tobias Harris available, and maybe that would have made the difference in this one, but when a great player is having a great game, it’s alright to take a step back and just enjoy the moment.

Curry went for 49 points on 14-28 shooting and hit 10 of his 17 three point attempts. The one he knocked down against George Hill to ice the game was absolutely ridiculous, and you applaud the guy for it, but the Sixers didn’t help themselves with the way they let him take some wide open shots coming over screens. It happened multiple times, with the on-ball defender going over the screen properly, but Curry finding space to heave anyway.

Most of that is credit to a superstar player with an insanely quick trigger, but you wonder if the Sixers could have done more, and Doc Rivers said this about defending Curry after the game:

Marc Narducci, Inquirer: It wasn’t an easy assignment for (George Hill). You had him guarding Curry at times there. That’s a tough first game back.

Rivers: Yeah and some of that he got switched on him. He wanted the assignment. He said ‘I won’t be great offensively, I haven’t played, but I can try to do my best defensively.’ I don’t think anybody did a great job. We didn’t do a great job. I thought we could have guarded him differently. But we were flat tonight, didn’t have a lot of energy offensively. If you said before the game that they were going to score 107 points and shoot 44%, you probably would have taken it. But when we shoot 39% and only have 96 points, it’s hard to win a game in the NBA these days.

Crossing Broad: When you say you could have guarded him differently, are you talking schematically? Could you have pushed Joel Embiid higher in those pick and rolls? What do you mean specifically by that?

River: You don’t want to push Joel too high. If you’ve watched Steph, he loves bigs (playing) high. He just beats them off the dribble. We could have did some things (differently)… I’m gonna give you my game plan, but we definitely could have (done things differently). Joel wouldn’t have been one of them, because you don’t want that.

Thoughts on that exchange?

Doc is right that Embiid isn’t much of a match for Curry in space. That’s fact #1 we can all agree on. There was a sequence in the middle portion of the game where Steph just went right around him.

Fact #2 is that they were getting cooked by going over those screens but failing to push Curry off the three-point line to get a hand in his face, which resulted in a string of sequences that looked like this:

Tyrese Maxey goes over, but that’s a great screen from Draymond Green, and with Embiid a couple of feet inside the three-point line there’s not much he can do to affect that shot.

At other times, they did have Embiid playing higher than this, sometimes standing right on the line, but Golden State would just initiate that pick and roll even further back, which meant Curry was pulling up and firing from spots like this:

You tip your cap to the guy but wonder if it’s worth trapping or blitzing here and living with the results. Curry is great in space, and Draymond is a good roller and elite passer. Maybe it gives them a run to the rim or a wide open three for somebody else, but at least Curry isn’t taking it, and the Sixers just weren’t able to do much or didn’t try to do much to get the ball out of his hands. I think fans are justified in applauding the individual performance while also feeling somewhat frustrated that the Sixers didn’t make any kind of adjustment in guarding him. Again, with Simmons and Harris on the floor, it’s likely much different.

Four guards

George Hill looked understandably rusty in his return to NBA action. It had been months since he played, and he shot 1-5 from the floor in 18 minutes of play.

One thing we did see as a result of his inclusion was a four guard lineup, which Rivers was asked about after the game:

“That’s something we’re going to start doing. Having George gives us an extra guard. So you’ll see that a lot. We weren’t very good with it, honestly, even though we did make a run with it during that one stretch. I thought we didn’t do a very good job in the first half with it personally. But it’s absolutely where we want to go with our second unit.”

Playing four guards and staggering the second unit in a way that keeps perimeter defenders on the floor could be helpful come playoff time, should the Sixers run into the Nets. Theoretically, if you’re only going eight deep in the second or third round, and you need to be able to guard their Big 3 consistently throughout the game, going a little smaller is a way to do that. We’ll see more of this as the Sixers experiment down the stretch.

“I think if you have bigger guards who can defend, where you can switch numerous things, veteran guards like me and Danny and Tobias, I think there’s an opportunity to do that,” said Hill. We’re just gonna do what coach asks us to do, but one thing I always tell the guys is that you can make up any (lineup) as long as you play hard.”

Other notes:

• This was the second highest assist number Joel Embiid has logged this entire season. He finished one assist short of his season high (9), which took place in February in the Houston game. He did a nice job handling double teams for the most part in this game, though the couple of turnovers down the stretch were killers, and came at inopportune times.
• The guy working the ESPN dump button did a great job during that Draymond cussing sequence.
• Rivers didn’t go into detail on Ben Simmons’ illness, but said he thinks it’s a stomach issue. It’s not COVID-related.
• Kevon Looney went for a career-high 15 rebounds in this game.
• Curry has five 40-point games in April and is averaging 40.8 PPG this month.
• Maxey was in double digits again. Better stuff from him in recent games.