Warriors coach Steve Kerr and superstar Stephen Curry allude to players lacking defensive fundamentals
After the loss 126–114 to the Minnesota Timberwolves last night, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr spoke matter-of-factly about the lack of boxing out he sees in today’s game.
“It signals to me a modern team,” Kerr said. “This is the modern NBA; guys don’t box out. It’s just the way it is. Every night on League Pass, I see the same thing. Players let guys come in from the weak side, and they think, ‘I’ll just get the rebound.’ It’s a disease that’s rampant in the NBA. The problem is, if you’re a real small team like us, then it’s going to hurt you more than it will hurt other teams.”
Kerr believes the difference in rebounding goes back to the way the game is being taught to this generation’s players.
“Most of these guys didn’t have a high school and college coach yelling at them for a combined eight straight years,” Kerr said. “It’s a different world today. And players grow up in a different way in terms of their basketball background. The detail is often the thing that is lacking.”
Players who were seeking success throughout their careers used to pay a ton of attention to every single detail and when they couldn’t figure out something, they would venture to ask all the great ones that played the game and picked up this knowledge. There are a lot of stories that have come into the surface with superstars such as Kobe Bryant admitting that he wanted to know how to keep guarding players through screens etc.
Nowadays, most players focus more on shooting the ball well and not so much on the fundamentals of the game on the other side of the court. That’s why the game today is a bit poor I would dare to say. Ben Wallace, Tony Allen and Gary Payton are some of the names that you think of when you try to think of great defenders — and of course, there are more. Players who can box out their opponents and bring huge value on the defensive side seem to not go far away from the fingers of both hands in modern basketball.
It’s education and perseverance that young players don’t have and when they enter the league it’s kinda late to learn all the basics.
Kerr claims that it’s the attention to detail that appears to have gotten lost at times in recent years — especially when it comes to defense and rebounding.
“Players have never had more skill than they have today in my mind,” Kerr said. “I’m amazed by the skill level. But the little things, getting back in transition — every night on TV, I see teams let a guy run past them in transition for a layup. We do it; every team does it. If you did that 25 years ago, your coach would take you out and he wouldn’t play you again. Now everybody does it, and as a coach, you can’t take everybody out. So there are certain parts of the game that are just different; players aren’t as locked in on those things. I think just because it’s a different time.”
Warriors star guard Stephen Curry was asked whether he feels the fundamentals of the game are being taught differently than they were in years past.
“I don’t know,” Curry said. “Everybody has a different upbringing in the game. When I was at Davidson, we literally drilled that before, during and after every practice. It’s part of just learning the fundamentals of the game — at this level, maybe it’s taken for granted, I guess that everybody has a certain understanding, angles and physicality and what not, but you have to be able to do it.
“I’m not saying everybody’s going to average whatever type of rebounds, but you know how to do it as a team. I think early in the season this was a big talking point; we figured it out a little bit and now it’s coming back to bite us a little bit now that we’re small again so — it is glaring. 57–34. That’s nuts. So we got to figure that out.”