Running Off Kyle Korver
Perhaps no shot is more terrifying to an NBA defense than Kyle Korver pulling up from 25 feet. With his understated size (Korver is 6’7″), frenetic off-ball movement, and lightning-quick trigger, it’s no surprise Korver led the NBA in three-point shooting marksmanship this season, hitting a ridiculous 49.2 percent of his three-pointers, including 13 of 21 (61.9 percent) against the Nets in the regular season. He didn’t disappoint the Hawks in Game 1, hitting five of 11 attempts en route to a team-high 21 points. The 11 three-point attempts tied a season high for Korver.
“We just got to be aware (of him),” Deron Williams said. “We have a certain way we want to play him. I think a couple of times we didn’t do that and as a result he got free. It’s something you just have to pay attention to because he’s constantly moving. When you look at the film, there’s never a time when he’s just stagnant. It’s tough to guard him. You have to give a lot of help. We’ll do that next time.”
Williams played with Korver when the two were on the Utah Jazz, and lobbied for him to join the Nets before Korver elected to sign with the Hawks in the 2012 offseason. The two remain friends: Williams’s celebrity dodgeball tournament was originally Korver’s idea, and Korver got Williams involved with the End It Movement, an organization dedicated to eradicating worldwide slavery.
“I just think he’s in the right situation,” Williams said. “He just has freedom here, complete freedom. A lot of coaches don’t like early shots. But for him to get open, that’s what he has to take because guys are sitting on him in the halfcourt. And so when he comes down in transition, he’s firing. When you’re shooting 60 percent from 3, that’s a pretty good shot.”
Korver has hit the second-most three-pointers in the NBA since the 2009-2010 season, behind just MVP candidate Stephen Curry, and has the best three-point percentage of any player in that time. Hollins, however, would only go so far in his praise of the shooter when asked if he was one of the best three-point shooters of all time.
“How many shots did (Korver) take (Sunday) and how many did he miss?” Hollins asked rhetorically. “See, if he’s that good, he’d make all of them! Everybody misses, man. He’s a good shooter, I acknowledge that, we acknowledge that as a team, we game plan for him because he is a great shooter. But until he starts shooting 100 percent, we’ve got to play and be in position to help, and then recover, and close out, we just have to do a better job of not letting him go backdoor, getting layups, we’ve got to do a better job of closing back out to him right into his numbers versus short and letting him shoot in the face.”
“It wasn’t like … we’re talking (Stephen) Curry, Korver in terms of what they do,” Hollins continued. “He’s a great come-off-the-screen guy, he’s great with moving without the ball, but he rarely puts the ball on the floor like Curry and shakes you up. Now, you start talking about Curry, and trying to gameplan for him, it’s a lot different than gameplanning for Korver. I said it last time, we have to gameplan for their whole team. They have a really good team. They won 60-plus games. If we start just gameplanning strictly for Korver, all those other guys are going to wreck us, too. We’ve got to gameplan for their team and do a better job on each individual. Whether it be Horford, whether it be Teague, whoever it is, we have to do a better job. Korver’s certainly one of those guys.”
