SAN FRANCISCO — Luka Dončić is a power not like another within the NBA proper now. He can management the sport with ease, get to any spot he needs on the ground, and knock down pictures that nobody else would even dare try.
However Mavericks’ celebrity level guard is just not the Golden State Warriors’ largest risk of their try to succeed in the NBA Finals. No, Golden State’s prime risk firstly of this Western Convention Finals sequence with Dallas is themselves.
Particularly, all of their turnovers.
The Warriors have walked a superb beneath head coach Steve Kerr, who calls for the ball transfer across the court docket, a movement that, in fact, comes with the chance of the ball transferring within the incorrect route, possessed by the opposite crew.
It creates a dichotomy that no different crew within the NBA can replicate.
The Warriors, at their finest, play essentially the most entertaining basketball anybody has ever seen. It’s stunning, egalitarian, floor-, banner-, and arena-raising.
However the Warriors, at their careless worst, are additionally essentially the most aggravating crew to observe in your entire league.
Exterior of Kerr’s first 12 months on the helm, the Warriors have completed exterior of the NBA’s bottom-10 in turnovers per recreation solely as soon as — the 2019-20 season when Steph Curry missed all however 5 video games.
This postseason, the Warriors are turning the ball over 16 occasions per recreation — the best mark of any league’s ultimate 4 groups by 20 %. And of their sequence in opposition to Memphis, they had been significantly careless with the ball. Of their blowout Recreation 5 loss, they turned the ball over 22 occasions — an enormous cause why they trailed by as many as 55 factors.
Kerr was sidelined for that Recreation 5 loss to Memphis. He had examined optimistic for COVID-19 earlier than Recreation 4 and was sitting at residence, consuming a beer.
Because the Warriors turned the ball over once more, and once more, and once more, Kerr — ever the fiery competitor, even with a chilly brew in his hand — practically broke his glass in frustration.
“The beer mug… was near being shattered after just a few of these turnovers,” Kerr mentioned Monday.
Towards Dallas, the byproduct of the Warriors turning the ball over could possibly be an early summer season break.
“These guys will feed off of turnovers,” Warriors ahead Draymond Inexperienced mentioned on his podcast. “It begins with me… I shall be higher in that space.”
However what’s Kerr’s message to the Warriors forward of this sequence? What's he telling the crew to curtail their penchant for giving the ball to the opposite crew?
Nothing.
“I’m not even bringing them up,” Kerr mentioned. “[Turnovers] have been the primary key on our board for about 72 straight video games. So there’s no level. I believe if I don’t say something, then we’re going to handle the ball.”
It’s the precise reverse of what another coach would do, and there’s comedic validity to that play.
Kerr known as it the Costanza Methodology — a call-back to the sitcom Seinfeld the place the persistently forlorn George Costanza determined to do the alternative of what his instincts informed him to do.
“If each intuition you had has been incorrect, then the alternative needs to be proper,” Jerry informed George within the episode. How proper he was.
Will the identical ways work for the Warriors?
At this level, it may well’t harm.