Two of the NBA’s highest-scoring point guards squared off Monday at Chase Center and Steph Curry bested Atlanta’s Trae Young with 50 points and a 127-113 victory.
Steph Curry knows a thing or two about facing what he famously dubbed "janky" defenses in the NBA.
The Warriors star has seen the box-and-one, triangle-and-two and just about every other defense you think of, especially over the past two seasons. But on Monday night at Chase Center, Curry was on the other side of the coin as the Warriors went to a box-and-one to slow down Atlanta Hawks star Trae Young in the Warriors' 127-113 win.
Curry enjoyed the role reversal.
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"I loved it," Curry said when asked he felt being on the other side of the box-and-one. "If felt great being on the elbow rather than trying to run around myself."
For the Warriors, they felt the need to make the schematic shift defensively to slow down Young, who was having his way early on.
"We tried different looks on the pick-and-roll with Trae because he had every option in the first half, he was scoring the ball, he was playmaking and he had a lot of space to operate," Curry said of the defensive switch."They are pretty talented because they have size -- John Collins can shoot a little bit, he can space and he can punish you in the paint when they have too many shooters out there. So if you let [Young] roam around and get his offense and playmake, he's tough. So we tried to take one of those away in the second half. [Gary Payton II] was awesome. I know he had some fouls but he made his presence felt.
"And then we tried a little gimmick defense on our own to kind of slow their rhythm down a bit and it worked. Night-to-night you have got to be able to make those adjustments on the fly, especially against a player as dynamic as he is and was in the first half."
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“He was amazing,” coach Steve Kerr said. “I want to say I’ve never seen anything like it, but I’ve been watching it for seven years. So, I have seen something like it. Still, it’s incredible to watch.”