Here in the Bay Area, we have had the opportunity to watch the San Francisco Giants win three World Series championships in the last five years. Entire books are being written about those teams and the reasons for their success, and they are numerous.
One consistent thing, however, trumps everything else when considering how the Giants, never considered the best team entering the 2010, 2012 and 2014 MLB playoffs, have gone 3-for-3 in title runs.
Bruce Bochy manages differently in the postseason than he does in the regular season.
This is a basketball column on a basketball website, so I’m not going to cite the numerous examples of his strategies, but here’s a hint. There have been several vanquished managers who, in their postseason press conferences, could only say, “We did it the way we did it all year.” Okay, Skip, see you in spring training. Meanwhile, Bochy and the Giants roll into the next series… and a victory parade at the very end of October.
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Monday night, Steve Kerr faced one of those moments in Game 4 of the Golden State Warriors’ series against Memphis. What they had “done all year” was decidedly not working. Defending the low post without help left the Warriors vulnerable to the matchup problems posed by the Grizzlies. Kerr would have had plenty of cover had he said, “Hey, we won 67 games in the regular season and 5 in the playoffs doing it this way — this will eventually work.”
Instead, he and his talented, well-compensated staff went to the drawing board and came up with not one, not two, but three major defensive adjustments. They put Andrew Bogut on Tony Allen, played Harrison Barnes in front of Zach Randolph, and doubled the low post aggressively.
The Grizzlies weren’t prepared for that level of adjustment. Why would you be? You’re playing a team that won 67 games by an average of 10-plus points! Why would a team like that do something radical?
Because, as Bruce Bochy knows, the playoffs are different.
There’s no time for the law of averages to come back to your side. You have to play every batter, every inning, every possession like it will make the difference in the ballgame, because it just might.
There was another Bochy characteristic that Kerr employed during his days in Memphis this weekend: Calm.
Now, anyone can be calm after one loss when the season has been so successful. Kerr was calm after two losses. Many coaches would have had a practice after Game 3, running drills meant to cut down the turnovers or get the shots to fall. Kerr, who has as fine a group of coach-influences as you would ever want (Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich is a remotely decent combination), did the opposite: no practice, but a full review of Game 3 on video with the team all together, something he had not done all season.
Bochy is like that. In 2012, when the Giants were down 2-0 to Cincinnati and 3-1 to St. Louis, Bochy never lost his cool, never pointed fingers or got down on his guys. He let the leaders lead, and he and his staff figured out the best way forward. Tim Lincicum out of the bullpen? Check. Barry Zito with a start to save the season? Check.
Players respond to this in a different way than they respond to a coach staying the course. When you stay the course, you transfer the pressure onto the players, and the harder they try, the worse it gets. When the players know that the coaches are engaged, trying to find a solution that gives them the best chance to win, they are free to be creative and focus on their own jobs.
I probably should not add this line, both because it’s obvious and because it doesn’t matter now, but everything about the Game 4 win illustrated why Mark Jackson is no longer the coach of the Golden State Warriors. Great staff, great strategy, calm presence. None were the case prior to Steve Kerr’s arrival.
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Two other notes from Game 4:
Draymond Green continued his run of outstanding first quarters. I wrote in this space after Game 2 that I thought an underappreciated turning point in the game was Green picking up his second foul (on a dubious call by Scott Foster) three minutes into the contest. In the previous two Warrior victories, Green had 13-3-5 and 11-3-2 (for points, assists and rebounds) in the first quarter. In Game 4 he had 11 points, 5 boards and a steal in that first period. While much has been made of Steph Curry not taking a shot until eight minutes into the game, it needs to be pointed out that Green’s overall production and Harrison Barnes’ scoring gave Curry that latitude.
One last thing: Something was missing from this win that we have seen in almost every one of the 72 previous wins for the “Ws” this season. I call it “The Warrior Coast.”
I know that sounds like a Disney movie, but it’s what happens in the fourth quarter (and sometimes the third) of games that the Warriors control by double-digit margins. We saw it a lot in the regular season, and it resurfaced twice in the New Orleans series. In Game 4, however, they kept the pedal down, matching Memphis’ shots the whole second half, not allowing the lead to drop below 16 points and keeping the crowd out of the game. I think this is a sign that the players are fully into “Playoff Mode.”
Where they found their coach and his staff waiting for them.
