In today’s NBA, there is no shame in being unconventional. We have a league in which the best offensive creator plays forward and the No. 2 seed in the East plays Carmelo Anthony as a power forward. Teams owe it to themselves and their fans to attempt to find the most effective combination of talent regardless of how it fits into the archetype of what an NBA five “should” look like.

Before the Golden State Warriors played the San Antonio Spurs in Game 3 on Friday, Mark Jackson said that “I am reacting to [the Spurs]” when deciding on a starting lineup that included both Andrew Bogut and Festus Ezeli in Tiago Splitter’s first game on the front line for the Spurs since he sprained his ankle last series. I immediately went “uh oh” because of the lack of recognition that statement showed.

In the words of George Costanza, the Warriors found plutonium by accident, playing true smallball only after David Lee’s injury took him off the floor and forced the coaching staff to stray from the self-created and arbitrary bonds of traditional positional definitions. In the first round, George Karl reacted the wrong way to this change and spent far too long trying to out-small the Warriors even though JaVale McGee did a solid enough job on the floor when the Nuggets did not overreact with two Centers at the same time. By not using his team’s own competitive advantage, Karl and Denver had to try and out-smalling the Warriors which proved next to impossible. The Nuggets got back into the series when the Coach of the Year realized that his talent could play their game better than a reactionary mess afraid of the strengths of his opponents rather than using their own muscle.

Proper spacing (particularly with a four that has legitimate range out to the three-point line) works well against more conventional teams because oftentimes that second big man will be uncomfortable stretching his defense out that far. Kenneth Faried has merits as a defensive player and plenty of energy but having Harrison Barnes out on the perimeter as the man he was supposed to be covering made him look foolish most of the time since he was out of his comfort zone as a defensive player. More importantly, it generated looks for Barnes and the rest of the team because it changed the structure of Denver’s defense both before the action started and the movement in their rotations.

In Game 3 of the second round, this change manifested itself early on. Having both Ezeli and Bogut on the floor together meant the Warriors only had three players who could make even a mid-range shot and it allowed San Antonio to start the game in a comfortable place on the defensive end. Furthermore, Ezeli getting two quick fouls in the first three minutes meant that Mark Jackson would have to be thinking about balancing his centers if Bogut ever got into trouble himself since the rookie backup already had very little wiggle room against one of the savviest big men in the history of the game. With the additional help of a few turnovers and some bad defensive possessions for Golden State, the Spurs ended the first quarter with a nine point lead and the Warriors never led again (though they did tie it in the second half).

In any series, one of the fundamental questions is which team has the advantage when both squads have their “best five” on the floor. While both Ethan Sherwood Strauss and Tim Kawakami have written bold and interesting pieces recently on David Lee’s potential place in that concept in the long term (my own take on that will be written over the next few days), the Spurs have a gigantic advantage when they can play Splitter without facing any major ill effects on the defensive end.

After Game 3, Gregg Popovich talked about how his players “know how to operate” when they can get their standard five out there together and that it feels “comfortable” for them. Even with David Lee on the floor, the Spurs’ starting five beats any normal Golden State five since they do that style better. That does not slight the Warriors- San Antonio had the third-best record in the entire NBA for a reason. Instead of taking their opponents to the limits of their ability and playing the game on their advantage, Mark Jackson and the Warriors ceded the high ground for the false positive of standardization and gave away any semblance of comfort or experience since Andrew Bogut and Festus Ezeli played about 20 seconds together in total during the regular season.

The Warriors still have a chance because they have a tactical strategy that has worked earlier in this series and against a solid Denver team last round. We just have to hope they understand that their only strong chance of winning the series comes from eschewing convention.

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After a challenging and triumphant series against the Denver Nuggets, what makes the Golden State Warriors' series against the San Antonio Spurs so interesting is that so many of the advantages they exploited in the first round will turn into weaknesses against Gregg Popovich and company.

Golden State’s defense gives up tons of threes and San Antonio has no problem with that- Over the course of the regular season, Warriors’ opponents shot 23.8 three-pointers per game which was the most in the league. That worked out fine against Denver because they were 24th in the league at making them and that included Danilo Gallinari who did not play in the series. The Spurs finished third in three-point shooting percentage and tied for second in proportion of attempted threes that were assisted, showing off the ball movement that generated those looks. While some may think of pace as a major difference here that would shade the results since it affects the number of possessions played per game, the Warriors and Spurs ended up playing at nearly identical paces this season (96.8 to 96.4). Golden State has yielded pretty much the same shots all year: the variance has come on whether the opponents could actually hit the looks the Warriors gave them.

The real battle when the Spurs have the ball could be in the paint- the reason Golden State gives up so many three-point attempts is that they limited opponents to the fourth-fewest shots at the rim for the season, which is a remarkable improvement considering Andrew Bogut missed so much time. The Spurs were ninth in attempts at the rim, but the Warriors are coming off a series with the No. 1 team in the entire league in this category. Considering how excellently Tim Duncan has played over the last few months, keeping him off the score sheet as much as possible should be a major undertaking. As was the case last series, fastbreak opportunities will likely dictate the winner in this phase of the game since that generates a large sum of these good looks. That said, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili can generate quality looks in the halfcourt like Ty Lawson did last series.

The Spurs are a much better defensive team than the Nuggets, especially with the lineups Denver put on the floor against the Warriors. While there are many different ways to evaluate the quality of a team’s defense, San Antonio outclasses Denver in just about all of them. From how well opponents shoot to free throw rates to D Rating, the Spurs have the hallmarks of a better squad even as they battled health issues all season. Fortunately, the one way they have been worse than Denver is generating turnovers, though the difference is not all that stark. Beyond the statistics of it all, the other challenge for the Warriors is that the Spurs have players like Danny Green who can do a good job on Stephen Curry without a ton of Andre Millers gobbling up rotation minutes without playing defense. San Antonio also has the benefit of a more cohesive system and less gaps that help facilitate open looks for their opponents. The other factor here is coaching, which I will get to a minute.

San Antonio has trouble on the offensive boards, which could be a big help to the Warriors’ chances. While the loss of David Lee could (and should) affect how the Warriors do on the defensive glass, this series marks a big shift in terms of offensive rebounding prowess. Denver’s group of aggressive and athletic big men topped the entire league in Offensive Rebounding Rate while San Antonio finished next to last, grabbing nearly 10 percent less of available boards on that end. Interestingly, that flips when we talk about defensive rebounds since the Nuggets were 27th and the Spurs were third. Since the Nuggets extending possessions hurt the Warriors on the defensive end, this trade-off should help Golden State as long as the smaller lineups do not shift the dynamic too much.

The biggest advantage the Spurs have in this series has to be in coaching. Simply put, Popovich has been a masterful coach and tactician for the majority of his career. There have been dark points (like the Memphis series a few years back) but those largely came when the opponents had an advantage the Spurs would have trouble negating. In the first round, George Karl made a series of blunders including trying to out-small the Warriors, playing JaVale McGee and Kosta Koufos together, and putting Andre Miller on Stephen Curry for extended periods of time. Each of these gaffes created an opening for Mark Jackson and the team to exploit and these mistakes acting in concert may have swung the entire series. Even the lack of freebies like that will mark a major change but having someone who can and will exploit Golden State’s faults will make it even harder.

All of this makes the series sound pretty desolate for the Warriors. After all, the Spurs have been excellent for years and possess legitimate ownage in San Antonio having not lost a home game to Golden State during Tim Duncan’s 16-year tenure with the team. Even with all that, fans should hold out hope because this is a Golden State team with a major homecourt advantage and one who can become a nearly unstoppable force when their shots are falling. San Antonio did not win any games in OKC’s Thunderdome last year and lost both times in Oracle this season, so stranger things have happened. I see the Spurs taking both games at home, getting a split at Oracle and then finishing it off at home in Game 5, but it would be awfully fun to be wrong this time.

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“People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important insofar as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it.” – Frank Sinatra

It has been incredibly tough to distill such a crazy series down to a core concept or theme. In six games, both the Golden State Warriors and Denver Nuggets (along with their fanbases) ran the full gamut of emotion with the Warriors coming out the other side with a hard-fought series win.

The story of the series is that the Warriors got a series of breaks heading into the first round, but still had to forge their own success through hard work and strong performances. They were fortunate to get the most beatable opponent seeded 1-5 in the Western Conference thanks to an injury to Danilo Gallinari (who George Karl interestingly noted was either the first, second or third best players on the Nuggets' roster this year) and them being a team that shot threes terribly the whole season. Despite those advantages, Denver’s length and activity made long stretches of games extremely difficult for Golden State, particularly once the Nuggets figured out how to defend Jarrett Jack.

Another decision that benefitted the Warriors was George Karl making strange decisions with his rotation throughout the series. After David Lee’s injury, Mark Jackson mostly went small (more on that later) and Karl responded by using less of big men JaVale McGee and Kosta Koufos, effectively denying his team one of their biggest advantages. We saw the impact of a fully sized Denver team early on in Games 5 and 6 when the team seemingly picked up an infinite amount of offensive rebounds.

Going small gave the Warriors the advantage in terms of both personnel and scheme since the reason Jackson used more perimeter players was to get his best players on the floor. On top of that, there were strange moments where Karl would overcorrect and play McGee and Koufos together. This took away their spacing and made them a much easier team to defend while also allowing the Warriors to get their bigs out of their comfort zone by using a PF who could at least shoot mid-range jumpers. I asked Karl about this after Game 3 and he responded that he began using the duo to stop the Warriors from getting as many offensive rebounds. Maybe playing them one at a time and not having their two biggest players be Kenneth Faried and Wilson Chandler would have helped that instead. The series could have taken on a dramatically different character if Denver had continued to play to their strengths rather than being afraid of their weaknesses.

Necessity is the mother of invention. A few of us in the media (most notably Ethan Sherwood Strauss) have been advocating nearly all season for Harrison Barnes to get some playing time at power forward because it would be difficult for opponents to handle when the Warriors were on offense without giving up too much on the defensive end. Throughout the season, Jackson steadfastly refused- the most used lineup with Harrison at the four played a whopping 28 minutes together all year. After David Lee’s hip flexor injury, Jackson had no choice but to give his rookie meaningful minutes at the position and the team responded with some of their best play of the year. Having a fourth player who Denver had to respect on the perimeter opened up the lane for more penetration as well as Barnes himself for plenty of good looks since bigs like Kenneth Faried did not like to go out to defend him in the corner. The times when Denver went smaller also meant more Andre Miller on the floor, which was a very, very good thing for the Warriors.

Another substantially fortunate element of the series win was that the Warriors did not face many consequences from some legitimately terrible execution in big moments.

In Game 6, the Warriors had chances to go two for one at the end of each of the three quarters. Each time they got into their offense so slowly that it became a one for one, losing the advantage. In fact, the Warriors did not score on a single one of those too-slow possessions but benefitted from the Nuggets going 0-for-3, as well and then having Corey Brewer make the stupidest foul of the year on Jarrett Jack with less than a second to go in the third. Awful decision-making on opportunities like this made the series much harder than it needed to be and that does not even include the disaster that was the last two minutes of this game. As someone obsessed with the “little things” in basketball, I was going legitimately insane when the Warriors both could not inbound and then even had to do it an extra time after Jackson called a senseless timeout. Hopefully those become teachable moments for the whole franchise.

The last majorly lucky development for Golden State was Denver’s heavy use of Andre Miller and lack of understanding of how to cover up his flaws defensively. It was amusing to hear Miller say after the game that his team was “outcoached” because one of the biggest reasons that statement is true is that Karl had far too much faith in him. As a general rule, playing your team’s worst defender on the other team’s best offensive player does not work out. In most circumstances, teams can shift guys around and hide the guys who cannot guard chairs if they need their production on the court on the other end. After a strong Game 1, Miller’s production on offense did not justify his use as anything other than a backup and his deplorable defense made him nearly unplayable. Of course, that did not stop Karl from putting him on Stephen Curry for some of the biggest moments in the second half of the series. A large portion of the Baby-Faced Assassin’s Game 4 explosion came with Miller on him and Karl kept it going for stretches of the following two games as well. In a series where the Nuggets lost two games by four or less points (and one largely off a stretch fueled by Curry roasting Miller), that decision played a major role in explaining why Golden State pulled out the series.

Despite all the good fortune, the Warriors still had to play well in order to beat a talented, deep Denver squad. All three rookies had strong moments, especially Harrison Barnes in Games 2, 3 and 5. Barnes did a good job on defense while also giving Karl a reason to be scared of playing a big at power forward, which helped keep Denver’s rotations out of whack.

Draymond Green became the most surprising shooter of the playoffs, making six threes at 50 percent shooting when he made 14 at 20.9 percent in 79 games during the regular season.

I asked Jackson about Draymond’s three-point shooting after Game 6 and he responded “[a]nybody on my team that puts the time in, there’s no shot I would tell them not to take.” After all, found money is always nice. The effort and intensity that Green brought all season got amplified with each big shot, especially with the crowd’s response at Oracle.

Andrew Bogut showed the team exactly what they were getting when they moved Monta Ellis 14 months ago. George Karl noted after the game that he had “forgotten how good [Bogut] was” when healthy- I’m guessing he will not forget any time soon.

Above and beyond those guys, Stephen Curry showed why he will be a difference-maker for years to come. His combination of insane range on his shot, underrated distribution ability, and supreme confidence make him the centerpiece of this team in every situation.

The sustained energy from the Oracle Arena crowd helped keep the Warriors in games even when they were playing badly (as they did in Games 4 and 6 early on) and very well could have been part of the reason Denver only shot 13-for-21 from the free throw line in Game 6. The crowd was so loud at the end of the series that I actually lost hearing in my right ear for a short stretch after the game. As someone who has covered and attended games all over the country, it was the loudest, best crowd I have ever seen.

Luck certainly played a role in explaining how and why the Warriors will play in the second round. They faced the perfect team and coach and benefitted immensely from some terrible tactical decisions that gave them extra leverage in some key moments. Even with all those advantages, it still took talent, guts, and some huge performances to move on to the second round. After all, things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.

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