The Golden State Warriors are an avalanche when they get rolling, and they are rolling.
Keep the ball moving. Stealing possessions and not giving them back. Play with pace. Force decisions until someone chooses the wrong one. three fall. lanes open. break opponents. The more momentum, the harder it is to stop. Face the energy of the avalanche or cower in fear, whether you’re anticipating destruction or you’re on its way.
That’s the flow the Golden State Warriors found with their Death lineup in the 2015 NBA Finals when they won their first championship. It’s what fueled her record-breaking 73 regular-season wins in 2015-16, what failed her in the 2016 Finals, and what led her to Kevin Durant perfecting the Deluge.
The Warriors found that flow again, only with third-year draft pick Jordan Poole late in the first round in place of a Legend and Andrew Wiggins throwing his best Andre Iguodala impersonation. Call it the Death Poole lineup or whatever you will, the Warriors use it to destroy the Denver Nuggets and the title is back in play.
As Denver’s Monte Morris said, “They’re out there laughing and dancing around. It’s just embarrassing.”
The five-man unit of Death Lineup holders Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, along with Poole and Wiggins, played nearly perfect basketball for six minutes and 23 seconds in Game 2 of their first-round series on Monday night. They scored 27 points in 11-for-12 shooting, assisted on 10 of those marks, turned an eight-point deficit before halftime and underscored a second straight win.
It was Curry’s error on a contested sidestep 3 pointer late in the second quarter that reminded him that his Warriors’ past two injury-plagued seasons are behind them. He no longer has to carry them alone.
“I thought about it for a long time just because the ground, the space, there were a lot of driving angles, even if you weren’t the one who was going to finish,” he told reporters after his 34-point effort 23 minutes off the bench. “Then the defensive reactions start and we have so many shooters and playmakers out there. You have to make them pay somehow. That’s where all the flow starts and all the good open shots – we love playing that way, and it’s demoralizing for a defense.”
The story goes on
The Warriors didn’t ask Poole to mirror Curry, because who would have the audacity to believe it’s possible to sculpt a respectable recreation of a unique talent? Poole would be so bold. He witnessed how the threat of Curry’s shots and his constant movement bend the defense, whether he owns the ball or not, and how he lets the defenders dictate decisions to shoot at will, attack the basket, ease or cut and to keep moving.
Poole has studied what makes curry great, integrated it into his practice and applied it to the biggest stage, fusing it with his own style of improvisation in the way Miles Davis learned from Charlie Parker and made jazz music his own. Only Wilt Chamberlain scored more points in his first two playoff games for the Warriors than Poole’s 59. As encouraging as Poole’s development was, no one saw this coming.
“He’s been watching Steph a lot and is making his best impression,” Green said, “and it’s incredible.”
“For him to follow up that Game 1 that he was great in with another game like that, some of the excitement from him tonight reminded me of his teammate who came off the bench a bit,” added Warriors coach Steve Kerr of Poole’s relationship with Curry on Monday. “It’s quite remarkable now to see the similarities both on and off the ball. Jordan got a pretty good education from Steph.”
Trap Curry on one side and Poole on the other. In between is Green, arguably the game’s most brilliant host out of the bag. Defensive game plans don’t become theories until Thompson is a tertiary option because you can’t stop the avalanche. You can try to ride it like the Chase Center people do, like a skier keeping up on the crest of chaos, or you can let it consume you. At least basketball has timeouts.
“For me, this is a pedestrian paradise,” said Green.
Golden State Warriors guard Jordan Poole has 59 points in his first two playoff games. (Ray Chavez/The Mercury News via Getty Images)
“They have three players who can do it on their own and they do such a great job of passing, cutting, moving and playing for each other,” said Nuggets coach Michael Malone, who knew this lineup was coming and can’t yet come up with an answer to. “I learned then, CYO basketball, St. Agnes: The most dangerous guy on the floor is the guy who just passed the ball and Steph Curry is the embodiment of that and he’s been doing it for years. He passes ball up you relax and he flies off another screen and he makes you pay. And Jordan Poole, his understudy, has been paying attention, doing his homework and playing the same way. That three on the floor with a Wiggins and a Draymond Green is very, very effective.”
Question marks for the Death Poole lineup lie on defense and rebounding, especially as the 6-foot-4 Poole has essentially replaced Durant and Harrison Barnes from previous editions. Reigning (and likely repeating) MVP Nikola Jokic should cause trouble for a quintet that counts Wiggins as its biggest member.
Enter Green, whom Kerr calls “one of the most unique, powerful, and influential players I’ve ever seen.” (High praise from the NBA version of Forrest Gump, an unlikely dynasty-on-dynasty influence for 30 years.) Green defends the 7-foot jokic like nobody has in the regular season at 6-6, keeping him at 32% shooting and a 1:1 support to revenue ratio. And Wiggins falls twice as fast over the boards as in his career.
“Technically we’re probably too small, but you have to bring defensive power and effort and energy, and then you can just turn it into an advantage at the other end of the floor,” Curry told reporters on Saturday. “See [Poole] be able to play pick and roll games with me and klay spaced and draymond setting [Wiggins] Slashing it checks many boxes on the list of what you would want for a strong offensive lineup. If we can get the job done defensively then we’ll be in a good position to make the teams on the other end pay.”
It doesn’t hurt that the Nuggets are missing two key players. There should be concern about how this lineup fares against the healthiest versions of the Phoenix Suns, Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat and Boston Celtics. That we need to seriously entertain her in this conversation is a testament to how many pauses have gone in the last few weeks. We went into the playoffs with questions about the health of Curry, Green and Thompson, the playoff readiness of Golden State’s supporting cast and the mix of the two in a lineup that played together with exactly zero minutes before the second quarter of Game 1 against Denver had.
The Warriors dynasty was at its best when closed formations played at breakneck speed somehow in total control and the ball found everyone moving. Nobody is playing the ball more in these playoffs than Golden State, and the Death Poole lineup is playing at a pace that would have led the league this season.
Curry, Poole, Thompson, Wiggins and Green are +29 combined in two playoff games in 11 minutes and scored 204.3 points per 100 possessions to Denver’s 75 — the equivalent of your city’s varsity basketball program bashing the elementary school campers. They have 14 assists against zero turnover with 17 baskets made and a 95.4% true shooting percentage. This is unsustainable, of course, but even a fall from basketball heaven puts them at the top of the most effective lineups of the Golden State dynasty.
Death Lineup 1.0: Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Barnes and Green
2015 NBA Finals: +21.3 NET (70 MIN), 97.07 Pace, 55.3 TS%, 67.9 AST% (2.77 AST/TO)
2015-16 Regular Season: +40.2 Net Rating (172 MIN), 110.31 Pace, 75 TS%, 65.9 AST% (2.22 AST/TO)
Death Lineup 2.0: Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Durant, and Green
2016-17 Regular Season: +22.4 Net Score (224 MIN), 107.49 Pace, 65.4 TS%, 70.5 AST% (2.25 AST/TO)
2017-18 Playoffs: +23.4 NET (129 MIN), 106.44 Pace, 66.6 TS%, 65.4 AST% (2.36 AST/TO)
Death Lineup 3.0: Curry, Thompson, Poole, Wiggins and Green
Playoffs 2022: +129.3 net rating (11 MIN), 103.28 pace, 95.4 TS%, 58.8 AST% (14:0 AST/TO)
Most frighteningly, the Warriors have a wave of contributors to incorporate into other versions of their small ball lineups. Iguodala is still there. Otto Porter Jr. is another delicate grand piano. Nemanja Bjelica can steal a few minutes in the center. Jonathan Kuminga lies in wait. All of the Curry, Thompson and Poole lineups are now +116 in 144 minutes – a sample size large enough to draw a conclusion.
The Warriors are a party with Poole, and they’re rolling again. Attention league. The avalanche is coming.
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Ben Rohrbach is a senior editor at Yahoo Sports. Do you have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach