Breaking the Warriors Down By Play Type: Cuts

Breaking Down the Warriors’ Cut Play in 2015-16

Last year, Golden State was extremely efficient on cut plays, and they ran them often which comes as no big surprise. The only team that ran more cut possessions was the Milwaukee Bucks at 11.1%. The Warriors ran them 10.7% of the time. There were other teams that were more efficient with them, but basically none with the same level of usage.

At 8th in the league, Golden State converted cuts to the tune of 1.25 points per possession. They sank their shot attempts out of cuts at 59.1%, and scored on 62.9% of them. One of the best was Andrew Bogut, who took shots off of cuts a staggering 36.6% of the time at a 1.42 points per possession clip.

The rest of the players on the team saw a fairly even distribution of frequency ranging from 6% to 9% outside of Ezeli, who got cut attempts on over 30.1% of his possessions. Every single one was efficient on them, with most being very good. Ten out of twelve players on last year’s Warriors sank cut shots at 1.0 points per possession or higher. Finally, they scored 1,120 points off of cuts in the 2015-16 season, more than every other NBA team. Basically, there were teams who ran cuts more and teams who scored at a higher ratio off of them, but when it comes to the mixture of volume and efficiency resulting in raw points, no one cuts better than the Warriors.

Next, let’s take a look at how they did getting to the line and protecting the ball in cuts.

Next: Generating Fouls