The Golden State Warriors came out firing on all cylinders against the Toronto Raptors on Saturday night. However, the high-powered Warriors went ice cold in the fourth quarter and nearly allowed a Raptors comeback.
As a result, Golden State relied on their superstar combination of point guard Steph Curry and small forward Kevin Durant down the stretch to help seal the win. This has raised questions as to why head coach Steve Kerr does not run the pick-and-roll with arguably two of the most explosive offensive weapons in the league more often. According to Anthony Slater of The Athletic, Kerr feels it is best to avoid such repetition:
“The game get's stagnant if you just run pick-and-roll over and over again. Obviously, you got personnel around those two that has to make that play make sense. If you do it the whole game, you don't get the other guys involved. We do it late. I know everyone thinks we should just run it every play. But then the other guys would just be standing around and be useless.”
Kerr added that the matchup was there for the taking against Toronto.
Article Continues Below“Steph had a smaller guy on him and we just wanted to get the switch and get KD the ball in the foul-line area. We got to it. We should have been able to get to it easier, but we got to it.”
Needless to say, it is nearly impossible to guard such a potent one-two punch. Their dynamic set raised speculation as to whether the Warriors would be better off just primarily running the pick-and-roll with Curry and Durant.
However, Golden state's versatility is perhaps their biggest strength. That said, it is clear that Kerr would like to keep it that way moving forward in the 2017-18 NBA season.