Golden State Warriors: Time To Dust Off David Lee?

When the 2014-15 NBA season commenced — with their resident All-Star big man David Lee sidelined — Golden State Warriors‘ first-year head coach Steve Kerr turned to their audacious, pungent bruiser, Draymond Green, to serve as the team’s starting power forward.

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Most would say the early-season Lee injury was a blessing in disguise. With Green inserted as the Warriors’ modern-day prototypical stretch 4, he would concurrently inject an extra dose of spacing and rhythm to the Dubs’ high-octane attack, while catapulting their defense from very good to elite.

More explicitly, Golden State devised their entire defensive scheme around their newly formed defensive-minded interior duo’s –Green’s and Andrew Bogut — strengths.

Their highly successful defense under assistant coach Ron Adams is based predominantly around Draymond’s ability to bang and defend in the post against bigger 4s while switching out to like-sized swing players with relative ease.

Without having to play the human defensive burden, also known as David Lee, and replacing him with perhaps the most impactful defensive player in the league this year, the Warriors defense improved by 1.8 points per 100 possessions when compared to the season prior, per NBA.com.

However, as we approach Game 3 of the 2015 NBA Finals, the Golden State Warriors find themselves in an unfamiliar position.

To be more specific, the Cleveland Cavaliers, through two games, have effectively stifled the Dubs’ stress-inducing, free-wheeling offensive assault. The Cavs’ airtight ball pressure and scrappy off-ball denial has ameliorated the potency of Golden State’s dribble hand-off and pindown sets — two primary staples of their critically-acclaimed offense.

More alarmingly, the Warriors are having a difficult time creating quality looks out of the pick-and-roll game. In particular, reigning MVP Stephen Curry has had a nightmarish time resolving the Cavaliers’ defensive coverage.

Chiefly, Curry has had a slow and strenuous struggle finding space while coming off of the screen, as the Cavs have been steadfast in their efforts to soft show with the screener’s man, usually Tristan Thompson, while the on-ball defender fights over the screen and scrambles back into the play — thereby, zoning up on Steph to, either, force him to take a highly contested 28-footer, or seduce him into giving up the ball to his open flaring big.

In theory, such a tactic should lead to an avalanche of high-yielding opportunities for Draymond Green — who often serves as the screener — to make plays off the catch in a short roll situation while enjoying an advantageous 4-on-3 opportunity.

However, the presence of Timofey Mozgov in the middle has made life peculiarly burdensome for Green, as his length and mobility within the tight confines of the paint have made it nearly impossible for Draymond to execute his two pet plays — (a) throwing the lob to a preying Bogut, or (b) driving strong towards the rack and finish around the basket.

Thus far, Kerr and assistant coach Alvin Gentry have yet to display the confidence in Green’s 3-point stroke to have him fully execute the pick-and-pop for an uncontested trey against the Cavs’ Steph-centric coverage.

If this is the persistent case, to combat Cleveland’s efforts to string Curry away from the basket via a soft double, perhaps the Warriors should revisit the David Lee experiment.

Lee could conceivably slide into the 5 in place of Bogut, or the 4 for Green; however, if inserted at the 5, the Dubs could, in theory, maintain a larger proportion of their defensive principles with Draymond in the game alongside the D-Lee.

More importantly, on offense, Lee has the prerequisite skill set to break things open for Golden State’s offense. His ability to finish around the rim, knock down the mid-range J, pass out of the short roll, and cardinally, his penchant for hitting the offensive glass should curate more scoring opportunities and reinvigorate some resemblance of the Warriors’ trademark offensive rhythm.

Moreover, as my former coach, NBA assistant coach and NBA analyst for NBC Sports Radio Doug Eberhardt, had suggested on RealGM’s Dunc’d On basketball podcast, with Green and Lee in the game, the Dubs can potentially demolish the Cavs’ trap on Curry by shorting the pick-and-roll.

In other words, have Lee set the screen and roll towards the basket, while Green flashes from the strongside short corner, receive the ball, and thereafter, hit his aforementioned diving teammate for an at-the-rim opportunity.

Several major concerns immediately arise, however, when discussing the David Lee proposition. Is he in game shape, and how will he affect the Warriors’ D?

Since returning from his early-season hamstring injury, Lee, as a result of rusting away on the pine, has looked — to put it bluntly — quite bloated whenever he’s been called upon. A fully functional Lee was an albatross on the defensive end; it is hard to imagine how horrid he would look defensively in an NBA Finals game while playing overweight.

Maybe the thought of turning back to Lee is an overreaction to their nail-biting Game 2 loss; but for two consecutive games, the Warriors have trailed for the majority of the contest.

Surely, the law of averages suggests Curry won’t shoot 5-of-23 ever again; he was hesitant on some of his early looks, but other than that, most of his shots could be qualified as quality looks for Steph.

In fact, his eFG%* (effective field goal percentage) rate of 26.1 percent in Game 2 was not only his worst shooting performance of this season, but his worst output for his entirety of his brief postseason career.

*eFG% = (FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA

Curry's 26.1% was his worst eFG%...
In 36 career playoff games.
In 97 games this season.
In the 247 games in which he's taken > 15 FGA.
— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) June 8, 2015

Undoubtedly, Dellavedova did an exemplary job defensively — in particular, with his ball denial — but, if Curry had connected on just a couple more of his makeable looks, we would be singing a completely different tune.

Going in to Game 3, it will be interesting to see what Kerr and his coaching staff does to counter the Cavs scheme to force the ball out of Curry’s hands. Will he turn to his former All-Star for a much-needed injection of offense? Can the rest of the team muster enough ball movement to curate fruitful looks?

Needless to say, Tuesday night at “the Q” (Quicken Loans Arena) should be another strategic and riveting affair.

Next: NBA: 30 Greatest Ball Handlers of All-Time

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