National Basketball Association

Steve Kerr's intriguing chess move

Published May. 13, 2015 11:50 a.m. ET

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By Miles Wray

I’ve heard that Steve Kerr, first-year head coach of the Golden State Warriors, hasn’t yet proven his effectiveness as a head coach because the elements of a successful team were already in Oakland when he arrived. Really, though, Kerr led this team to 16 more victories than they achieved last year with Mark Jackson at the helm—16 wins is a vast improvement no matter where a team is in the standings. Believe in Kerr’s credentials.

Before Game 4 of his team’s current series against the Memphis Grizzlies, Kerr made a pretty dramatic tactical change, with his team down 2–1: he had his starting center, Andrew Bogut, guard Memphis’ starting small forward, Tony Allen. If that sounds weird, well, it looked pretty weird, too—but it was hugely effective in Golden State’s 101–84 blowout on Memphis’ home court.

Between his six seasons as an unpredictable wing for Kevin Garnett’s Boston Celtics, and now five years as a bona fide defensive stopper with these Grizzlies, Allen has seen quite a bit of high-leverage playoff action. In fact, Allen is in the top 20 among active players in total playoff games played—considering that some players above Allen on the list started playing in the ’90s, he’s really packed in a lot of playoff games in a (relatively) short 11-year career. As a defense-first player, Allen obviously receives hardly any of the glory that his offensive-minded opponents do. Fortunately this playoffs, there has been a bit of a renaissance of Allen appreciation, none written more poignantly than Brian Phillips’ piece praising Allen for Grantland.

By switching Bogut onto Allen, though, Kerr was boldly taking full advantage of Allen’s greatest weakness on the basketball court: offense. More specifically: scoring. For his career, Allen has shot below 35 percent on shots further than 3 feet away from the basket. That might be OK for a rim-dominating center like DeAndre Jordan or Tiago Splitter, but that will not work if you are a 6’4” wing player. Allen’s ghastly deficiencies on offense show, in a way, how valuable his defense is: with that kind of shooting accuracy, there’s no way that Allen would even be in the league, much less on a four-year contract, if his defense was anything other than exceptional.

So, in Game 4, Bogut’s assignment wasn’t so much to guard Allen as it was to be a roving helper on any of the other four Grizzlies. Golden State’s starting power forward, Draymond Green, also spent considerable time guarding Allen as the game went on. The results were hugely effective. Allen was limited to only 16 minutes on the court after averaging 36 minutes in the first three games of this series. Allen also went 2-for-9 from the field without any free throws—with plenty of those shots being, insultingly, cases where the Warriors left him wide open and instead focused on chasing the rebound.

Allen’s offensive impotence created plenty of inefficient possessions for the Grizzlies—but Bogut’s and Green’s instincts in providing double-team help also forced the Grizzlies into committing 16 turnovers, a high for the series.

The Grizzlies felt pressure from this tactic early. In the opening minutes of the game, you can see that Bogut is camping out near the low block while Allen stands all the way in the corner. Thats about 15 feet away, or a vast ocean in NBA-defense terms:

As the play develops, Zach Randolph makes a pass from the perimeter into Marc Gasol in the low post. While Green is definitely giving up significant size to Gasol, the job of defending the Spaniard is a lot easier when Bogut is there, too. Green and Bogut both work to deflect the pass (Green is credited with the steal) and the fast break is on. The whole time, nobody on either team looks at Allen, who is standing still in the corner.

The Warriors earned another turnover in the second quarter using this exact same tactic of double-team trapping. This time it is Green who is the primary defender on Allen. Both Green and Bogut, who is now guarding Gasol, are playing so far off their men that the key is effectively closed down from the start of the possession:

The Grizzlies start to run a pick-and-roll on the right side of the court, but there’s a problem. The Warriors let Allen wander free down the baseline, leaving three defenders (Bogut, Green, and Andre Iguodala) to guard just two Grizzlies:

As Gasol rolls to the basket, the Warriors have enough men for Bogut and Iguodala to double-team the ballhandler, Jeff Green, who panics and throws the ball out of bounds:

Even though Allen is on the other side of the court by the time this play is over, the Warriors’ turnover was definitely caused by his lack of shooting prowess.

In the second half, it looked like Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger had Allen stick as close to the basket as possible. As you can see here, Draymond Green is floating far enough off of Allen that he could probably get a layup if one of his teammates hit him with a quick pass:

But the Grizzlies did not capitalize on that enough for the Warriors to change their strategy. While Mike Conley assisted Allen on one close-range basket in the second quarter, the reality is that Allen scored four points on nine shots, and the best solution Joerger could come up with was to pull him off the floor.

This was a deft piece of coaching by Kerr, and the game plan was executed perfectly by the many excellent defenders on the Golden State roster. It will be fascinating to see the chess move that Joerger makes in Game 5.

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