Warriors fire up their defense, shut down Thunder on the road
OKLAHOMA CITY — Last weekend, with his team mired in a 4-6 rut, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr stared down one of the most trying tasks of his career: get an offensive dynamo to finally start playing relentless defense.
A franchise that had relied on a switch-heavy scheme, not just offensive movement and record-setting 3-pointers, to reach the NBA’s summit was botching box-outs, failing to run back in transition and squandering big leads. In their 110-88 win over the Thunder on Saturday night at Chesapeake Energy Arena, the Warriors showed just how dominant they can be when committed to stingy defense.
An Oklahoma City team that boasts a former MVP (Russell Westbrook) and a current MVP candidate (Paul George) was thrown off-kilter by Golden State’s parade of switches, failing to top the 90-point mark for the first time in weeks as it shot 31-for-96 from the field, 13-for-41 from three-point range and 13-for-23 from the foul line. At one point in the second quarter, after watching a particularly crisp defensive possession result in a clanged jumper by Westbrook, Kerr shook his head and muttered to himself, “Wow, that was beautiful defense.”
Such comments have been sparse this season. Thanks more to lagging effort than any problem with the scheme, the Warriors entered Saturday ranked No. 16 in defensive rating — a troubling stat, given that only one team since 2001 — last season’s Golden State club — has won a championship after finishing the regular season with a defense out of the top-10.
But with Kevin Durant sidelined the past two games by a right ankle contusion, the Warriors have made significant progress on that side of the court. In their 106-104 win in Houston on Wednesday, they repeatedly put hands on shooters, holding the Rockets to 11-for-41 (26.8 percent) shooting from beyond the arc....