Isiah Thomas sees a connection involving the IU basketball dynasty of the 1970s and 80s, and the Golden State Warriors NBA dynasty of the last decade.
The former star point guard for the Hoosiers revealed it to one of the Warriors on his podcast.
“The offense that you run, I played for the guy who invented it,” Thomas said on The Draymond Green Show. “His name was Bob Knight. I won championships at Indiana University as a student under Bob Knight.”
Before Steve Kerr arrived at Golden State in 2014, the Warriors ran a lot of isolation and pick-and-roll actions.
But Kerr, who came up under the likes of NBA coaching legends like Phil Jackson and Greg Popovich, has been more about player and ball movement, with a heavy emphasis on passing and swinging the ball.
Green said the Warriors players bristled at the concepts Kerr was trying to implement at first, before they went on to win four NBA titles in an eight-year span.
Knight’s Hoosiers won three NCAA titles in an 12-year span utilizing read-and-react motion principles, including the 1981 title led by Thomas.
When he went on to the NBA, Thomas had the reverse experience of the Warrior players, who had to learn and accept the motion offense. Motion was all Thomas knew before he got to the league.
“When I got into the NBA, I had never ran a pick-and-roll in my life. I played the passing game in high school, I played the passing game in college,” Thomas told Green.
“In terms of your style of play in Steve Kerr’s basketball philosophy, that passing game, read and react, move the basketball, set screens, that comes from coach Knight’s philosophy and how offensive basketball should be played,” Thomas added.
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