Explain One Play: Harrison Barnes wins game from Stephen Curry & Draymond Green gravity

We got about one half-quarter of Good Warriors (in Q2) in a messy game by the Bored Warriors.  The Bored Warriors need some artificial goal to keep them engaged, like revenge against some slight, or trying to get Klay Thompson a record for points in a quarter, or getting Klay or Stephen Curry 50 points. Or Brandon Rush 20 points. You know, conceptual art games.

Well, tonight, Draymond Green said he messed up the team's flow by going for the triple double.

Draymond takes blame for the 2nd half effort, says he was "selfishly unselfish" in chasing a triple double

— Ethan Strauss (@SherwoodStrauss) January 31, 2016

That only explains 20% of the team's lack of focus in the second half. It takes a village to crap away a twenty point lead with a series of bad turnovers (Klay and Steph) and missed bunny layups (Andrew Bogut). It looked like the whole team came down with the flu in the fourth quarter.

Anyway, the game came down to this final play, which was the Warriors' bread and butter play. When the going gets tough, let Curry and Green run a high pick and roll. We've broken these down in detail over these weeks (for instance, Explain One Play: Stephen Curry turns two blitzes into dunks and Explain One Play: Curry & Green's Favorite Play). If you let Green screen Curry's man, Curry will be isolated against a slower big man. If you blitz Curry with two players, then if he can get the pass to Draymond, he will have a few seconds to run a four-on-three play.  And if you are the Sixers, you get the worst of both worlds by starting off by switching Draymond's defender, then having Curry's old defender run all the way across the court to double Steph, leading to this bang-bang play.

As soon as the super late double team came, the Sixers were doomed to give up a good shot. Maybe 2013 Steph has to think about what to do under the pressure, but 2016 Steph has seen many many blitzes. He throws his outlet to Draymond with extra touch and Draymond gets to run that 4-on-3. Harrison Barnes is in the right corner, Klay is on the left wing, Shaun Livingston is cutting to the basket.

At this point, the Sixers defense completely implodes. Harrison's man collapses to the lane to cover Draymond, Klay's man ALSO collapses to the lane.  Draymond passes to Harrison, since he is already facing that way and Harrison calmly hits the wide open 3 to win the game.

Rewatch and watch Brett Brown, the Sixers head coach. He's the manic figure in front of the "PA" in "PARTIAL PLANS". You can see he probably discussed with the team how to play the Curry-Green pick and roll, and he wants a blitz. He first waves Draymond's defender to play up closer (and not to sag to contain the Curry drive). Then Curry's old defender Ish Smith switches onto Draymond. Coach Brown starts frantically waving Smith over to double team Curry.  You can also see two other assistant coaches on the bench waving Ish to double Curry.

If you want to read more video breakdowns, check out the rest of the series of Explain One Play articles. For the full updated index, go to The Explain One Play series index.