The Golden State Warriors have three players with a huge greenlight that gives them the freedom to pull up from anywhere on the court.
It is extremely rare to find an NBA team where three different players all have the green light to shoot from wherever and whenever they choose. Having the green light to shoot whenever you feel like it does not come easy especially when dealing with NBA coaches.
To even be mentioned, your offensive ability has to be so stellar, just for any coach to put more faith in you than in his system. A greenlight reputation is one that is earned; one that is understood and one where your production will speak for itself. The first players to come to mind:
Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, James Harden, Damian Lillard, DeMarcus Cousins, Kobe Bryant, and Kyrie Irving, to a lesser degree, but, after last year’s Finals, one could say he earned it.
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There are several more stellar offensive talents with the universal green light, but it is extremely rare to find three talents on the same roster capable of chucking up otherwise bad shots and making them into good ones.
Contested or uncontested, with these three guys on the court, when the ball goes up there’s always a chance. There are very very few players that can unconsciously pull up from 27 feet with 20 seconds on the shot clock and not be scrutinized by their coach and their team. Some players have a green light simply because they fall into the role of first option because of their teams lack of talent so I am just gonna label them “yellow lighters”.
https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/758126299537928193
The Warriors have three chuckers; three players that are more than capable of taking a heat check from 27-30 feet and not get sent to the bench. Scary, as this would be a poison for most teams, but not the Warriors. The Warriors half court offense will be lethal; so large and so spaced, making life that much more difficult for opposing defenses.
Between KD, Curry and Thompson, they combined to account for 6.3 3pt makes per game from between 25-29 feet from the basket, whereas NBA regulation three pointer sits at 23.75 feet (22 feet in the corners). Defenses are gonna struggle for sure. Warriors offense this season will be a record breaking one to say the least.
Just look at Durant’s first bucket at Oracle, a pull up contested three pointer, all net, just to get the crowd going. This is certainly a prologue for greatness to come from this year’s Warriors squad.