SAN FRANCISCO — Golden State’s ascent to the top of the NBA was fueled by the three.
Yes, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green were the anchors of this dynasty, but we’re not talking about that triumvirate.
We’re talking about the 3-point shot.
The Warriors, led by the Splash Brothers — and I guess Green made a few, too — practically became synonymous with the 3 in the early days of the Dubs’ runs to what is now six NBA Finals in eight years.
Golden State revolutionized the game. But in order to reach the NBA Finals this season, they needed to go against the trend they created.
Now, the Dubs are heading back to the Finals on the strength of 2-point shots.
The logic back at the start of this experiment was simple, and it persists: Three is greater than two.
The execution was a bit tougher, of course, but having the two greatest shooters in the history of the NBA helped with that.
It didn’t take long for the paradigm to shift, though. When the Warriors — a “jump-shooting team” — won the title in 2015 and set an NBA regular-season record for most wins the next season, the entire league decided to copy their blueprint. Why wouldn’t they?
So the NBA — all 29 other teams — started chucking.
Some teams were better than others, but everyone is trying to use the simple math to their advantage.
In that 73-win Warriors season, they led the NBA in 3-point attempts per game at 31.6. This past regular season, that number would have been good for 28th in the league. Since Golden State’s first title run in the 2014-15 season, 3-point attempts are up 44%.
The Dallas Mavericks stand as a near-perfect embodiment of this new NBA model — a bastardization of the Warriors’ attacks from all those years ago. The Mavs, led by superstar point guard Luka Dončić, chucked 3-pointer after 3-pointer in these Western Conference finals. They averaged 45 attempts per contest in the five-game series, 10% more than any other final-four team and 37% more than their opponent, the Warriors.
While Dallas was shooting and so often missing, the Dubs decided not to fight fire with fire. Instead, they attacked the weak points of the Mavericks’ defense — the paint and the mid-range.
That’s kind of a big area, no?
But hey, 2-pointers count, too.
In all, the Warriors scored more than half of their points from 2-point shots in their five-game sweep of the Mavericks. A whopping 63% of Golden State’s shots in the West Finals were 2-pointers.
In the regular season, only two Warriors scored more than 10% of their points from the mid-range — Thompson and Wiggins. In the conference finals, Curry and Jordan Poole joined them in the 10-plus club. Moses Moody and Nemanja Bjelica were not regular rotation players, but they did see solid minutes against Dallas. They have both scored more than 10% of their points from the mid-range this postseason, too.
This is not the first time the Warriors have used an increased amount of mid-range shots to advance to the NBA Finals, but this time, the personnel shooting those shots was different.
But there is no Kevin Durant on this Warriors team — no alpha scorer who can put the ball on the floor, get to their spot, rise and fire.
Yes, as much as Thompson or Wiggins might want it to be the case, the Warriors aren’t calling isolation plays for either player, as Golden State coach Steve Kerr would for Durant.
No, the Dubs’ system had to create those mid-range and paint shots through drives, cuts, pocket passes and back screens.
We’ve seen the Warriors’ offensive system for so long that it has surely lost some of its allure. But the Western Conference finals might have been the Warriors’ offensive system at its purest and most outstanding form.
How else can you explain Kevon Looney scoring 21 points in Game 2 and shooting 70% in the series?
And the positive stemming momentum from that execution will no doubt prove value in the NBA Finals, even as they will surely face a tougher defensive team — if not the league’s best in Boston.
For years, the Warriors — and, specifically Curry — have been blamed for “ruining the game.” And as anyone who has watched college basketball (or the Mavericks) lately would tell you, there’s some serious merit to that argument.
But in the Western Conference finals, the Warriors won by playing great at offense at all three levels of the court — paint, mid-range and perimeter.
It was an inside-out game that would appease any basketball purist.
These Warriors not saving the game these days, but they are proving a point: versatility still wins in this league, and the Dubs, thanks to tremendous talent and epic experience, have an incredible — perhaps unparalleled — ability to adapt to any situation.
