The Dallas Mavericks finally got on the board in the Western Conference Finals as they won Game 4 119-109 over the Golden State Warriors to extend the series. It can be hard to take a lot of positives from a series in which you’re down 3-1, but head coach Jason Kidd has seemingly found a big one.
The Warriors played a lot of zone defense in Game 4 and Kidd claimed that the reason behind it is that they can’t guard the Mavericks 1 on 1. He went on to elaborate on why it was great that a team like Golden State was resorting to this tactic against them.
Jason Kidd on Golden State playing a lot of zone in Game 4: "The biggest compliment we've gotten is they got to play zone because they can't play us one on one, right? This is a championship DNA team. They're giving you a compliment that they can't guard you. It's pretty cool."
— Eddie Sefko (@ESefko) May 25, 2022
Jason Kidd on Golden State playing a lot of zone in Game 4: “The biggest compliment we’ve gotten is they got to play zone because they can’t play us one on one, right? This is a championship DNA team. They’re giving you a compliment that they can’t guard you. It’s pretty cool.”
It certainly is an interesting way to look at the situation but Kidd probably needs to put a positive spin on things to uplift his team and make them believe that they can overturn this deficit. It is, however, quite unlikely that they pull it off and you’d back the Warriors to end this series as the teams head to San Francisco.
As for Kidd, he was also full of praise for his superstar Luka Doncic who was voted into the All-NBA First Team and this partnership has worked out better than most would have thought it would. There were question marks surrounding Kidd when he got this opportunity but he has done a fantastic job so far in leading this team. Even though their run is almost certain to end in a couple of days, they can exit the stage with their heads held high.
