I think Dame and Giannis are starting to figure some things out, but they are currently missing too many opportunities that Curry and Green do not. It is a long season, but if they want to win a championship, they need to start working together better to capitalize on the fear and panic the other creates in a defense.
The holiday season is an unmatched time in the calendar year. The lineup of events within forty days is the 27’ Yankees Murders Row of the annual calendar. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve are all coming straight down the pipe at you. Queue the Mariah Carey Christmas album on repeat. For most, the holiday season is a time to gather around the table with family to give thanks for their blessings, leave copious amounts of cookies out for Santa in hopes that he’ll leave you some cool gifts, and pop ridiculously marked-up bottles on what is affectionally known as “amateur night” in my house.
For me, the holiday season always moved to the beat of my basketball calendar. In high school, it was the Christmas Tournament. In 2004, I played in The Glaxo Smith Kline at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, North Carolina, my favorite event as a high school player. I grew up attending the event every Christmas with my Dad, watching Omar Cook, Ronald Curry, and Matt Bonner, so playing in it was a dream come true. When I was in college, it was the big Thanksgiving tournament. The Maui Invitational in 2009 was the absolute apex of any event during what ESPN affectionately calls Feast Week.
But my favorite event every holiday season was the annual New Year’s Day scrimmage between the Ravenscroft School Varsity and Junior Varsity squads. My high school coach, Kevin Billerman, always told me the day wasn’t about winning or losing; it was about teaching. He challenged the varsity to do one thing that day:
Teach Our Counterpart - Each Varsity player was responsible for teaching his JV counterpart something that would set them up for success later that season and in the seasons to come. It was our job to pass on knowledge.
Both teams ran the same actions and used the same vocabulary. The most significant difference between the teams was a concept referred to in Phil Jackson’s book Eleven Rings as “Collective Thinking Power.” The Varsity squad possessed a much higher level than our JV counterparts. We had failed both individually and collectively more and, in doing so, were allowed to learn and grow our Thinking Power separately and collectively.
Not so dissimilar to the difference between the NBA’s reigning most potent two-man game of Steph Curry and Draymond Green (CG) and their up-and-coming counterparts Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo (LA). It’s simply a matter of Collective Thinking Power, and the CG combo has that in spades. They have played an astounding 40,588 Regular Season and Playoff possessions together and produced four championships. Compare that to LA’s anemic 788 Regular Season possessions and zero Playoff possessions. There is nothing like an extra forty thousand possessions to enhance the Collective Thinking Power of two of the world’s most creative, intelligent, and talented players.
Panic Thinking & Two-Man Game Optionality - -
During a broadcast years ago, the legendary Coach Hubie Brown said, “You set screens to make defenders think. Great shooters make defenders panic thinkers, and when you panic, you make mistakes.” Creating one moment of Panic Thinking (PT) for defenders every possession will lead to great offense.
PT moments happen in two-man games when defenders are forced via screen or cut to make a quick decision to help, not help, or switch.
The more optionality the action creates, the more opportunities defenders have to produce a PT moment. Once a PT moment happens, it becomes an exercise of making simple reads for the offense: shoot or pass.
Curry and Green do a masterful job of synthesizing their Collective Thinking Power into moments of pure panic for defenders.
Twelve Notes Then The Octave Repeats - -
The three most common on-ball two-man games run in basketball are the pick-and-roll (PnR), dribble handoff (DHO), and Get action. If you have never heard of a Get action, it’s pretty simple: you throw the ball to a teammate and then immediately follow it. The first layer of possible options players can produce in these actions are strikingly similar.
(List represents base options based on coverages: Switch, Touch-> Drop, or Deep Drop)
- The non-screening player uses the screen.
*Options - Shoot, Drive, or Pass to the screener (roll or pop).
- The non-screening player goes away from the screen, a.k .a. refusal.
*Options - Shoot, Drive, or Pass to the screener (roll or pop).
- The screening player keeps the ball in DHO or Get.
*Options - Shoot, Drive or Pass
Wash, rinse, and repeat. All three actions have essentially the same basic options. These two-man games are the basketball equivalent of how Jackson Maine saw music. Twelve notes, and then the octave repeats; it’s the same story told over and over. The general structure and options are always the same, but what makes a combination unique is how the players see those twelve notes.
Of all the two-man games, the PnR has the most simple communication for defenders because it moves the slowest. It also has the lowest turnover risk because only the most skilled ball-hander of the two dribbles the ball. All five defenders have the opportunity to see the ball and man clearly.
The DHO creates more complications for defenders and can move much quicker than the PnR. Because the screener has the ball, the offensive player using the screen can move at a much higher rate of speed and ferocity to set up their attack angle into the screen. The inversion of the ball handler also takes away the opportunity for all five defenders to see the ball and man clearly. Finally, the DHO offers a golden opportunity the PnR does not: A catch-and-shoot three-point shot during the initial screening action. Catch-and-shoot threes are the holy grail for an NBA offense.
But by far, the most complicated action for defenders to navigate is the Get action. It supercharges all the speed, ferocity, and optionality of the DHO. Every possible option in the previous actions is available here, but with one massive difference: the screener has not used a live dribble. Any sniff of early help from the screener’s man can be punished with an immediate dribble drive into a 4v3 attack. This extra layer of optionality of the Get action makes it the ultimate two-man game.
Every player must operate within these twelve notes. The great ones can see the space as a blank canvas of endless opportunities to create magic within.
Curry & Green vs. Lillard & Antetokounmpo - -
Over the years, the Varsity squad has figured out one crucial piece to the puzzle that still alludes their JV counterparts. This critical detail has become the lynchpin of their two-man game’s creativity and success. Handoff opportunities at the point of inflection, like the ones in DHO and Get actions, are significantly greater than their live-dribble counterparts in the PnR.
According to Second Spectrum, Lillard has run 10.4 PnRs per game and only 1.6 handoffs. Curry has run 8.0 PnRs per game and 2.5 handoffs. Curry also obliterates opposing defenders in these actions, scoring at an astounding 1.74 Points Per Possession (PPP) compared to 0.76 PPP in PnR actions. Meanwhile, Lillard sits at a respectable 1.25 PPP in handoffs and 1.00 PPP in PnR actions. Throughout an 82-game season, Curry is on track to score two hundred and twenty-two more points from handoffs than Lillard. Factor in all the buckets teammates score from the PT moments Curry creates in these handoffs, and you are talking about thousands more points per season.
The most significant fear factor the DHO and Get Action have over the PnR is its option for a C&S or one-dribble three-point shot opportunity. These shots are the creme de la creme opportunities for elite shooters like Steph Curry and Damian Lillard, and the fear of giving up one of these opportunities sends defenders panic thinking into overdrive!
Curry is taking 6.1 zero dribble threes a game and shooting a blistering 54.1% on those shots. He’s also getting up 1.1 one-dribble threes a game and shooting a casual 60.0% on those attempts. That’s a ridiculous 1.625 PPP. If that doesn’t make you panic as a defense about giving him one of those shots, then someone needs to check your pulse.
The CG two-man game consistently keeps defenders off balance by creating these catch-and-shoot moments. They are challenging shots to get, especially when you are the best shooter on the planet. They are only possible because of the selflessness of both players operating within their two-man games. They work hard to set up intelligent cuts that enhance the other’s skill set, creating endless optionality and moments of panic thinking for defenders.
My college coach, Roy Williams, used to have a “thought of the day” before every practice. On the first practice of every year, it was always the same: “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit.” This quote perfectly embodies the CG two-man game.
The good news is that Lillard and Antetokounmpo have opportunities to shift their diet from less efficient play types like ISO’s to more efficient ones like handoffs. Should they be turning more PnRs into Handoffs? Yes. But there is even lower-hanging fruit they can get to first.
The Varsity squad would never pass up on opportunities like the ones above to run a two-man action. They know that together, they create significantly more panic than alone.
But there might be hope for the JV. Recently, they have put handoff actions on tape that feature hints of creativity and optionality. Making you wonder if they are starting to understand they can play the twelve notes together and not just as the solo artists they have been all their careers. Or was it just a mirage born out of necessity? And not genuine cohesive creativity like the Varsity squad displays so often with the effortless ease of a Slash guitar solo.
CG’s two-man game has 40,558 possessions of Collective Thinking Power, a number that dwarfs any other current two-man game in the NBA, which they consistently use to create panic-thinking moments. The duo are magnets to each other and lean on their experience in high-leverage moments when a game is on the line.
The Special Sauce - -
The CG two-man game contains Steph Curry, and the LA one doesn’t. It honestly might just be that simple.
Lillard is often referred to as the second-best shooter behind Curry, and he might be, but the gap is vast (link). Over his twelve seasons in the league, Lillard’s season high for made threes is 275 in 2020/21, and he has shot over 40% from three-point range just once, hitting 270 threes at 40.1% in 2019/20.
Meanwhile, the walking supernova known to the world as Steph Curry has topped the 275-made threes mark six times in his fifteen seasons. Maxing out at an NBA record 402 made threes in 2015/16. Somehow, more impressively, is the fact that he has only shot below 40% from three-point range ONCE in his fifteen-year career, on shooting volume unknown to any other human walking the planet!
Put that level of shooting together with the 40,558 possessions of Collective Think Power, endless creativity, and both players’ genuine egolessness, and it’s easy to see why the Curry and Green two-man game is still light-years ahead.