During Friday night’s easy Warriors win over the Blazers, Steph Curry had the dish of the night to Andrew Bogut in the fourth quarter. After using a Bogues screen to move left past Damian Lillard, Steph circled under under the basket with the ball like Steve Nash, and lobbed a perfect, no-look overhead lob to Andrew Bogut at the rim from the opposite side of the paint.
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The big Aussie nonchalantly tapped it into the cup, and the Warriors went about their win. But we couldn’t help but remember a similar assist less than a month ago when the Warriors were still cruising on their season-opening 24-game winning streak and traveled to Indiana on their road trip to face a hot Pacers team.
The Dubs of course won that game, but not before showing Indiana’s crowd how quickly they could explode during a huge run in the first and second quarter.
At one point in the first quarter, Bogut moved into a bit of a pin-down screen for Steph to curl around and catch the ball going to his left across the paint. Bogut’s man — Jordan Hill — is then forced to help on the 2014 MVP, so all Steph did was take one dribble to draw in Hill, before throwing an overhead lob to Bogues for the easy two.
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It’s basically unguardable, and Curry and Bogut have gotten very good at using their strengths (Bogut’s body, Steph’s hand-eye coordination) to cover up their weaknesses (Bogut’s set shot, Steph’s svelte build).
A similar play developed in Portland, but Steph instead used that Steve Nash dribbling motion to lull the Blazers into thinking they had prevented a bucket at the rim. Instead, Bogut just tapped another perfectly thrown no-look overhead lob into the hoop.
The Warriors have Steph Curry, but they also do things together on a different plane of harmony than the rest of the NBA.
