Nope, no disagreement here. My comment was more in regards to
sentiment I've seen that
the Warriors' loss somehow means the Kings don't need to worry about shooting.
this is certainly foolish thinking on the part of the individuals making such a claim. i've no love for the warriors or the pace-and-space era of nba basketball, but some measure of floor spacing has been essential to the game for decades, though it's usually in service to a strategy that prizes the acquisition of points much closer to the basket. the warriors and a couple other teams have attempted to turn the three-point shot into a primary weapon, and that requires the kind of exceptional outside shooting talent that only the warriors have, at this point. and bravo to their front office and their coaching staff for embracing the skill of stephen curry and klay thompson. it's never happened that two of the greatest shooters of all time play on the same team, and it would be silly to attempt to turn the curry/thompson warriors into a grind-it-out ball club that clears space down low for andrew bogut post-ups--just as it was silly for george karl to attempt to turn the cousins-led kings into the fastest team in the nba. as always, you coach to the talent you have, and the warriors have done an excellent job of maximizing their outside shooting talent...
but the warriors loss in the finals doesn't act as some kind of referendum on the entire enterprise of outside shooting in the nba. i think it does a bit to deflate the notion that the warriors are "redefining the game" as we speak. in the absence of their typical shooter's touch, what did the warriors need in the last three games? they needed a traditional alternative to generate points at the rim, to find an offensive rhythm, and they didn't have it. they played really good defense last night, but perhaps the greatest scoring team in nba history couldn't come up with points in a tightly-contested fourth quarter. it was stunning to watch three-point shot after three-point shot clang off the rim. i kept thinking that they were going to uncork on the cavs in the final five minutes and wipe them from the face of the earth. instead, the dubs went completely scoreless during that period. as someone who thinks the three-point line remains a gimmick that cheapens the game, it was thrilling for me to witness. for the warriors, it was surely a major bummer. and unfortunately for them, neither curry nor thompson are particularly gifted slashers. curry can find points at the rim when he's up against weak competition, but it's never his first (or even second) instinct. he'd rather try to shoot over kevin love on the perimeter with the game on the line than simply blow by him for a better shot...
if andre iguodala were ten years younger, i think the warriors would be near-perfectly constructed, because the iggy of yore had a fearless rim attack, and the warriors need a player like that who can help them generate some easy buckets/free throws in a pinch if the shots aren't falling from outside. the dubs only had 13 free throws last night to the cavaliers 25. cleveland was much more aggressive in getting to the rim, and even though they missed a lot of those shots, they managed to draw just enough fouls to create a bit of separation in the fourth. it was gutsy basketball, and it wasn't pretty
at all. but winning a title isn't about pageantry, and the cavs were better equipped to win when the game got mucked up and ugly. i mean, all i've heard all season long is how "beautiful" warriors basketball is. yeah, sure, if you consider running side pick-and-rolls ad nauseum and chucking 30-footers early in the shot clock to be "beautiful." but what do you do when those beautiful shots aren't falling in game 7 of the finals? what do you do when the statistics and the averages and the past accomplishments no longer matter? during the regular season, you can blitz each new opponent you face. but in the playoffs, you've got one team gunning for you and game planning for you, and we watched both the thunder and the cavaliers--two teams that are surely inferior to the warriors--unmask deficiencies that didn't seem like they were there for the majority of a 73-9 season...
all of that said, the kings definitely still need to worry about shooting. they've needed to (and failed to) surround demarcus cousins with adequate shooting since they drafted him. i don't want the kings to add three-point shooting because it's en vogue. i want the kings to add three-point shooting because it will make big cuz's life easier. he has to work
way too hard for points when the kings just dump it to him into the post. and cuz needs to become better at recognizing when to pass out of those double- and triple-teams, because somebody's gonna be open, and god help the rest of the nba if cuz and the kings ever manage to figure this out...