the warriors' championship-level team defense

and steph curry's superhuman endurance

through two games of the series between the golden state warriors and the dallas mavericks, it's very clear what the mavs' game plan on offense is: attack stephen curry.

when you have luka doncic on your team, you have the luxury of sometimes not having to run a set - just let him target a defensive matchup he likes, spread the floor, and let him cook.

that's exactly what dallas tried to do here, but the warriors played it perfectly:

let's break it down.

luka's at the top of the key, defended by andrew wiggins. his goal is to get steph switched onto him, so curry's man - reggie bullock - runs over to set a screen:

naturally, the warriors' goal is to not have steph switched onto luka. steph sees bullock running up, so he lets draymond green know and they pre-switch - so now dray is defending bullock, and steph is defending jalen brunson:

bullock sets the screen for luka, but there's no advantage in going at green so luka attempts to attack wiggins early, who cuts off his drive nicely. luka then tells bullock to clear out so he can try to hunt steph again by calling brunson over for a screen:

steph has two objectives. the first is to not let luka turn the corner on the screen and get a direct line to the basket. the second is to not switch onto luka. one way of preventing both of these things from happening is to hard hedge by charging all the way into luka's body:

in this position, luka can really only do one of two things: 1) protect the ball, wait for steph to recover back to brunson and wiggins to recover back to him, and reset for an iso-attack 40 feet from the basket, or 2) hit the rolling brunson and let jalen attack the warriors in a 4-on-3:

he decides to go with option #2. this forces draymond to help and cut off brunson's bee-line to the basket. as he's helping, he's pointing to let steph know to help cover bullock, which steph alertly does:

in fact, steph and dray switch so well that it messes with brunson's next move, as he's caught in mid-air and is forced to instead float a pass to spencer dinwiddie in the corner. klay closes out on dinwiddie well, and crowds him as the shot clock ticks down to 5. look at him chop his feet before he contests and blocks the shot:

awesome possession.

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steph's cardiovascular fitness never ceases to amaze me. and it's not just how he runs around non-stop with and without the ball on offense for 35+ minutes every night, it's also how willing and able he is to fight off these attempts to hunt him in the pick-and-roll game on defense:

and he does it over and over again. moves his feet, arms up in passing lanes... it's really remarkable:

what an athlete.

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