r/nba 2d ago

The way defenses used to guard Steph pre-2016 is crazy to see

https://streamable.com/x8lsr0
3.7k Upvotes

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u/Asleep_Ground1710 Bulls 2d ago

Watching older basketball sereis is just informative in general. Like watching the 2000 Blazers-Lakers WCF and you see some modern concepts like Sabonis dragging Shaq to the FT line, or the Blazers defense not really guarding guys like Harper or Shaw.

What's funny about this clip it reminds me of the 2022 drop coverage that Boston employed on Curry in the finals. Daniel Li had a good video on it, talked about how Boston did it to try and limit the extra passing from Curry-Draymond PNR.

45

u/FailedAwards Warriors 2d ago

To be fair it was kinda working til it wasn’t

38

u/Asleep_Ground1710 Bulls 2d ago

If there's one man who can 1v5 drop coverage it's Curry lol

15

u/arika_ito 2d ago

It worked pretty well until game 5/6 from what I recall from the Thinking Basketball videos but Steph also had that insane game 4 so it makes sense that the Celtics would try adjusting the gameplan

3

u/TatumBrownWhite Celtics 2d ago

It only worked when Robert Williams was in the game.

Anytime he was not in the game, it went...poorly.

3

u/Gauchokids Warriors 2d ago

I watched game 7 of that series semi recently and while yes there are some modern concepts, there’s also stuff like Steve smith getting hot in the second half and the Lakers continuing to go under every screen on him for no apparent reason.

It’s actually wild how many little things we take for granted are relatively recent concepts. Phil Jackson used to give up corner threes on purpose as late as 2010.

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u/monkeyman80 Lakers 2d ago

I was just reliving 2001 wcf. Game 3 I think porter hit the only 3 for the spurs. 1! 3 all game.