The Golden State Warriors announced themselves to the world on the grandest of stages in 2015. In the playoffs, they blew past the teams they faced in the West, on their way to the first title of their dynasty. Their 2015 championship is the main reason the current NBA is so dependent on outside shooting, and according to Andre Iguodala, it never would’ve happened if they hadn’t defeated the Memphis Grizzlies in the playoffs.
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Speaking to fellow Grizzlies legend Zach Randolph on their ‘Out the Mud‘ podcast, Tony Allen recalled the playoff series against the Warriors. Having swept the Pelicans in the first round and booked a meeting with the Grizzlies, the Dubs were handed their first tough test, according to Iguodala.
Allen recalled that after the series finished, Iggy thanked him and his team, claiming they helped the Warriors toughen up for the championship. Allen also recalled that after they won the Finals in June, he ran into Iguodala (then a Finals MVP) in Vegas. He then told him that the rigid physical defense that the Memphis side played helped the Warriors players adjust to the high intensity of playoff basketball and that the Grizzlies were in a way responsible for them lifting the title.
“Iguodala said, ‘Hey man TA man I ain’t gon lie man, y’all got us ready for what’s ahead of us’. I actually ended up seeing him in Vegas, and he was like ‘If it weren’t for y’all, we wouldn’t have been ready for this championship.'”
The Grizzlies took the series to 6 games against the Dubs, and their intense defense, anchored by Allen and former DPOY Marc Gasol, was a huge reason for that. Despite their eventual loss, they took the game to the free-scoring Warriors and limited them to 97.8 points per game. The Dubs, who finished 67-15 that year, had a regular season average of 110 ppg.
However, both Allen and Randolph agreed that despite all their defensive skill, they simply had no answer to Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. The duo’s shooting prowess was on full display in that series, and many people consider it the first peek at the way the game would eventually evolve.
Curry and Thompson made a splash against the Grizzlies
Lovingly called ‘The Splash Brothers’, Curry and Thompson’s three-point shooting revolutionized the modern game. Even now, 9 years on from their first title, their blueprint is followed in the league, with teams prioritizing shooters over physical players.
Allen and Randolph jokingly blamed themselves for the current state of the league, saying if they’d beaten the Warriors, the 3-point revolution would never have arrived.
“I always thought like man, had we got through that series, we was on the way. I just think man, like, hell we could’ve stopped all that, it’d still been the old way of basketball, inside out.”
Randolph laughed as he recalled, “Like you said, it was a new era. We ain’t played nobody in the playoffs like Klay and Steph coming off screens. Man, you remember they put Bogut on you. They changed the game, as we learned. We was still playing the big way, and they was playing the small way.”
Steve Kerr’s small-ball offense changed the game, and catapulted 3 of his starters into superstardom. Steph, Klay, and Draymond Green had massive responsibilities in his system, and all three of them carried them out perfectly. Green’s strength allowed him to guard bigs even at 6’6, and his passing vision meant he could execute pick and rolls to find Steph and Klay on the perimeter with ease.
