32 wrote:- You know what undeniable, piss-scared respect looks like? Answer: a constant double-team without the ball. DLee may be making the all-star bid, but teams are blitzing Curry hard lately. Did nobody tell them that he played through constant triple-teams at Davidson and is exceptional at finding the open man? Not to mention, his range does out to 27 feet (no joke).
GREAT point. I think it started off with Miami and Boston tried to do the same thing. Here's the beauty of it all though. Curry's teammates realize that they're able to get off because of the focus on Curry. I didn't get a chance to watch the post game interviews for Boston, but after the Miami game, this was the first thing Jack mentioned when interviewed by Ric Bucher (i think). He said that the reason why he was able to get career high in points was because everyone was focused on Curry and that allowed him to get better looks.
Another thing worth mentioning is that even though Boston was blitzing Curry, he still had a strong showing. Not sure what his line was and I'm not going to look at it but I swear it could've been something like 22 points and 9 assists or something.
This team is doing great things and it's basically because of 4 things (in no particular order):
1) Curry's emergence and health. He's bringing his shooting averages up from the beginning of the season and he's staying healthy.
2) Lee's consistent play. He's answering his critics by doing what he usually does on a good team. He's not just a stat sheet stuffer, he just needed some supporting cast as anyone would.
3) SOLID rookie play. Barnes isn't consistent, but he doesn't need to be just yet. He's giving us spurts of energy when we need it. Ezeli is giving us great interior presence although he has solid rock hands. Dude needs to work on it. And my personal favorite is Draymond Green. He is absolutely atrocious in terms of shooting, but watching him play defense is a thing of beauty. I mean it. I'd rather watch this guy play defense than watching highlights of that Barnes over Pekobitch poster dunk, but that's just the type taste I have.
4) And this is a big one and everyone knows what I'm going to say already: Carl Jack. These two has been absolutely HUGE for us. It's nice when you can take two starters from a competitive team last year, and put them in as your 2nd unit. The way these two performed off the bench has won us many games and we're not even half way through the season yet. Their impact doesn't end on the basketball floor either. Jarrett Jack is a flat out leader. He says the right things, he brings us down if we're too high, and he brings us up when we're too low. He's like our medication if the Warriors had bipolar disease. There have been countless times where he was chosen to give the post game interview and many times he cites Brandon Rush as his/his team's source of motivation. You can't coach that type of camaraderie and I flat out love it. It pains me whenever I think about us losing him next year.
