Here’s two quotes from Steph Curry praising the leadership Chris Paul brings to the Golden State Warriors.
(via Gil’s Arena):
Curry talks Paul’s communication skills/lineup questions:
“It’s one of those things where you have a guy that just understands how to play basketball. He’s elevated teams that he’s been on his entire career, and even at this stage, like what he did in Phoenix when he’s been there. They didn’t accomplish the goal, but they were better because of his leadership and his ability to manage the flow of games. So there’s a lot of excitement for us, like we want to talk about strict X & O’s; he connects a lot of lineups for us in terms of being able to help some of the young guys figure out what it means to play winning basketball and be in the right spots. He’s obviously a great leader in terms of his communication. He’s gonna get on you and he’s gonna overcommunicate, and we need that. I’ve already seen him playing pickup with helping JK (Jonathan Kuminga), how to help run the pick-and-roll, where to be at, giving him confidence in those type of scenarios.
“That’ll help us in terms of trying to be more cohesive when I’m on the floor and when I’m off. Me and Klay [Thompson] being able to run off the ball if CP is running the point. We obviously have a lot of questions to answer about who’s starting and who’s finishing. That’ll play itself out, but at the end of the day, we all are motivated to win. I’m sure nobody more than him, and for us to know exactly where we feel like we belong as a team. So there’s a lot going for us in that respect to try to put all our energy towards that. There’s gonna be a lot of narrative and conversation around sacrifice and what that looks like when it comes to there’s only five guys on the court at a time. But I think we can all figure that out, so that’s gonna be our challenge at the end of the day.”
Curry on Paul’s trusted ball handling/Jonathan Kuminga & Moses Moody figuring it out:
“It’s just another guy that’s comfortable with the ball, more than comfortable with the ball in his hands. It gives us a different change of pace if the game slows down a little bit, and CP’s one of the greatest ever at running that pick and roll and dicing up defenses that way, and if you put spacing around him, too. So I’m looking forward to seeing [Jonathan] Kuminga & [Moses] Moody take a step up in a sense of just figuring it out, getting what it takes to play winning basketball. They have so much talent, and I’m excited just to see it all kinda connect because it’s time to make that jump.”
