Kings-Warriors playoff preview: Mike Brown says Steph Curry ‘can kill you’ in any defense

“He’s a guy that, if you show him the same thing over and over again, he can kill you,” Brown said Thursday. “Even if you change it up, he can kill you. He’s a tough cover for anybody.”

Slowing Curry has to be mandate No. 1 for Brown’s team in the first round of playoffs beginning Saturday. Since Curry first helped the Warriors make the postseason for the first time in 2013, Golden State is 22-4 in playoff series with four championships in tow.

And since Steve Kerr took over as head coach in 2015, that record improves to 21-2, with the only losses coming in the NBA Finals against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, and in 2019, when Kevin Durant ruptured his Achilles and Klay Thompson later tore his ACL against the Toronto Raptors.

Curry is the NBA’s all-time leader in 3-pointers made in the playoffs with 561. He’s the only player with more than 500. And he can hit them in a variety of ways. During the regular season, he made 119 catch-and-shoot 3s and 152 that were considered pull-ups, according to the NBA’s data. He’s also considered the best off-ball movers in the league.

“It’s super hard to guard him,” Kevin Huerter said. “The movement he has, what he does for their offense, the attention he garners both with the ball and without the ball is super tough. Obviously, everybody knows that he makes that offense go, so we just gotta be super locked in.”

Huerter said he’s studied Curry and Klay Thompson’s off-ball movement for years, while noting the physical toll it can take on defenders to run with them as they sprint off screens and run to open spots on the floor to get shots while their teammates have the ball.

“That’s something this series I think everyone’s aware of,” he said. “Both teams play with a super high pace. They’re a team that’s kinda known to play up and down, super fast. They’ve been doing it for years. They’ve worn other teams out doing it. I think we’re ready for it. We just gotta throw a lot of different bodies at (Curry).”

Exactly how the Kings’ try defending Curry remains to be seen. Other teams, like the Raptors in the 2019 finals, have tried a box-and-one defense with one player hounding Curry man-to-man while the other four teammates play in a zone defense to avoid allowing open shots to teammates.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike B. does it,” Curry said to reporters in San Francisco this week when asked about the box-and-one. “We did it a lot when he was running the defensive show here. So there’s nothing you’re surprised by. We hadn’t had any experience with that up to that point, so you’re trying to figure that out. All that’s in the memory bank to go back to on in-game adjustments and being able to respond to whatever the defense is throwing at you.”

Another approach is blitzing Curry with double teams, sometimes as far away as 30 feet from the basket, which the Cavaliers tried during the Warriors’ first Finals appearance in 2015. Golden State countered with passes to Draymond Green running downhill in pick-and-rolls, finding shooters and cutters in four-on-three scenarios.

“It’s gonna have to be a group effort,” Brown said. “We’re going to have to throw multiple bodies at him.”

Sacramento enters the postseason with the league’s 24th defensive rating. Opponents shot 37.3% from 3-point range, 26th in the league. Brown and his players are harping on physicality this week when it comes to defending the Warriors.

Perhaps the player most equipped to guard Curry is backup point guard Davion Mitchell, who won more defensive player of the game chains after wins than any other Kings player. Aside from Mitchell, the Kings would likely have to rely on some combination De’Aaron Fox, Huerter, Harrison Barnes and Keegan Murray to contain Curry.

“He never steps moving without the ball,” Mitchell told the Sacramento Bee on Thursday. “I know they have a really good connection, because they know where he’s gonna be. They know where he likes the ball.”

Mitchell mentioned the split actions the Warriors run, where Curry and teammates will screen for each other and run in different directions to confuse defenses. Split actions have been a successful mechanism to generate open cutters to the basket and open looks for shooters.

“It kind of confuses teams because they’re going to make the cut and they always pass the ball to the cutter and get layups, and you don’t want layups to happen,” Mitchell said. “It’s tough. Their team is really good and well coached, well connected.”

The Warriors also freelance as much as any team in the league, making them difficult to prepare for. They don’t often run set plays that can be scouted beforehand. Their offense is often in constant motion, much like how the Kings operate on that end.

When asked about defending that, Mitchell went back to the theme of the week.

“I think it’s just being physical,” Mitchell said. “Watching the teams that they have problems with, (they) have been physical with them. Just trying to do your best to get a contested shot every time. Try to wear them down a little bit. Especially Steph. Try to wear him down so he can’t run around so much. And it’s about ball pressure on the people that are making passes and making it harder for them to see those easy targets.”