The Warriors are without Kevin Durant, but in the two full games they’ve played without the superstar forward they haven’t skipped a beat.
With Durant out, Stephen Curry has once again assumed control of Golden State’s offense and, as such, the team looks much more like the fluid, pacy, ball movement focused squad that dazzled en route to the 2015 title prior to Durant’s arrival in the summer of 2016. There are many that will gleefully point out that the Warriors are far more entertaining to watch without KD’s iso-heavy presence on the floor, and Seth Curry even noted that while Golden State’s better with Durant, they’re harder to guard without him.
That’s because with Durant they attack you methodically, with one of the greatest scorers to grace the court dominating the ball and taking on most any defenders as needed. Without him, the ball moves more freely and the onslaught comes in waves of points and dazzling possessions featuring a number of rapid passes leading to, often, a wide open bucket.
The majority of fans prefer the KD-less Warriors for aesthetic reasons, but when pressed on the topic by Rachel Nichols, Curry refused to give people the soundbite they wanted of him saying it’s more fun playing without Durant. As he says, it’s fun to win, and they do a lot of that with or without KD.
Sat down with @StephenCurry30 and we talked about allllll the stuff: What it's like playing without KD, which style he likes better, what it meant to beat the Rockets ("you saw how we celebrated"), plus facing his baby brother in this series with Portland. pic.twitter.com/1VqcygQfPR
— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) May 16, 2019
Curry’s point is that the Warriors wouldn’t have advocated for Durant to join them if they didn’t want to change how they play in order to be better. They knew going in it would change roles and their overall offensive style, but were willing to make those changes in order to become even better.
The Warriors will likely play much of this Western Conference Finals without Durant, as he’s still “not close” to returning per the most recent reports. That means we’ll get to see more of this free-flowing style, but we’ll also learn a lot about how sustainable this kind of run is for Golden State with the group as constructed. The roster beyond that core group of Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, and Shaun Livingston isn’t what it was a few years ago and, while the bench was spectacular in the opener, it remains to be seen whether they can continue to live with a 10 or 11 man rotation, as they seem to want to do playing at the pace they are without Durant.
If they do succeed and happen to run the Blazers out of the postseason quickly, it’ll create quite the conversation about how much they need Durant — whether fairly or unfairly — entering his free agency offseason. Whatever the case, don’t expect Curry, who referred to Durant as the best player in the world recently, to say anything inflammatory about playing with or without KD.
