# Tiki Taka With Steph Curry's Warriors? Guardiola's Tactics in The NBA?

An episode of [The Real Deal: A Real Madrid Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1807821669), 12 Jan 2026, 18 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/103607aa8/podcast/play/113374799/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-0-1%2F415329363-44100-2-bb04dc5bf47b.mp3

Jarod Hector and Siddharth Ramsundar discuss the true origins of Golden State Warriors' motion offense (hint: within basketball, and not from Barcelona as many would have you imagine) and discuss both the real parallels and the more mythical PR elements behind this marketing campaign. We also discuss how the Celtics offense in 2024 with Joe Mazzulla was a more direct translation of the tiki taka principles.

## Transcript

[0:00] Hello and welcome to The Real Deal, a Real Madrid podcast with
[0:03] me, Jerrod Hector and Sid Ramsundar.
[0:06] What's up Sid? What's going on, Jerrod just
[0:09] thought we should debunk this stuff going around about the
[0:12] state Warriors offense. This is a bit old.
[0:16] This is a couple months old now, but there was this mind the game
[0:19] episode where Steph Curry, LeBron, Steve Nash are out there
[0:24] and I love these guys, but man, they were so targeted and then
[0:27] using name drop in Barcelona and ticky Taka principles, the
[0:32] principles that word man, it's like they do all of soccer
[0:35] Twitter and click on it. Well, one of the things that we
[0:39] pride ourselves on said is, you know, speaking truths and myth
[0:43] busting and breaking up narratives.
[0:44] And look, narratives are in and of themselves, not bad things,
[0:49] right? And narratives and stories,
[0:50] that's how we learn primarily as human beings, right?
[0:52] It's your story, right? And certain stories and
[0:55] narratives sell well and just sound better than others, right?
[1:00] If you want to stay in the soccer realm, Sid, football
[1:03] realm, Real Madrid's rementata year, right?
[1:10] Two years ago where we won all those all those Champions League
[1:13] matches with these amazing comebacks.
[1:17] It's much better to sell that story at the rementata spirit is
[1:21] woven into the DNA of Real Madrid, right?
[1:24] That's a that's a much better story to sell than it is to say.
[1:28] We got extremely lucky. Thank God we had Tebow,
[1:30] Courtois, We had some moments of incredible individual brilliance
[1:34] by Kareem Benzema, Phoenicious Junior and Rodrigo, right?
[1:37] That helped us, you know, win that Champions League 2 years
[1:40] ago. That's just not, frankly, as
[1:41] good a story as the spirit of Reminata is woven in the fabric
[1:46] of Real Madrid's DNA. That's just better.
[1:49] That's a better story, right? And I so I understand why
[1:52] stories are told and why we do that.
[1:54] But as we always say, there comes a point when you want to
[1:57] actually have analysis, you have to look past story and narrative
[2:00] and just be honest about what is actually happening.
[2:03] But we are. We have been, we have a whole
[2:06] narrative offensive here that we're we're dealing with.
[2:08] Well, it's not it's not that easy because.
[2:10] So firstly, I just just to touch, yeah.
[2:13] So Curry is out here saying it's based on the tiki taka
[2:15] principles and everyone eats it up.
[2:17] And then Clay has earlier said cited Barcelona's tiki taka
[2:22] inspiration as inspiration. So he said Steve Kerr use it as
[2:26] an example, like he said, I give credit to Steve.
[2:29] He came in and he had a vision just to keep that thing hot.
[2:32] He gave us the perfect example of FC Barcelona.
[2:34] They call it tiki Taka. It's just kick it to the open
[2:36] man and with us, give it to the open man, keep it moving and it
[2:39] just plays to me and Steph strength so much.
[2:44] I think it's awesome for marketing.
[2:46] I just want to start before before anything like whether
[2:50] this is true or not. I think it's just awesome for
[2:52] marketing. I've seen, I've seen like Sam
[2:55] Esfandiari, like these warriors podcasters saying like when,
[2:58] when this stuff came out recently, there were quote 3.
[3:00] It's like, oh, I've always been telling you guys like we just
[3:02] took it from Barcelona, Guardiola.
[3:04] And you know, it's funny because I think the the real instance of
[3:09] that happening was Joe Missoula and working with Pep in the
[3:12] Celtics finals because they've really worked on how can we kind
[3:17] of pull their defense out of the paint for open layups or pull
[3:20] the defense into the paint for wide open threes.
[3:23] And definitely that I thought was very closely comparable to
[3:27] Tiki Taka because every player on the floor was a pretty good
[3:31] ball handler and above average. But just getting into myth
[3:34] versus reality, like the warrior stuff and Tiki Taka are actually
[3:39] very different. And I don't know if you want to
[3:42] say anything there, but just a brief introduction.
[3:45] The Warriors like they don't get pressed every position on the
[3:49] floor like a soccer team. So essentially, like what what
[3:53] the ticky tock, what their Warriors offense is doing is
[3:56] taking players who are traditionally not involved and
[3:59] having them be passers. But these guys don't have to be
[4:02] insane dribblers like a Bousquet or a Dani Alves or a Rodri.
[4:05] They don't have, they're not deeper players who are suddenly
[4:08] better at handling the ball, but they can release it.
[4:11] They're good passers if you give me the right system.
[4:14] I, I, I think you know, and this is one of the, the areas where
[4:17] when we do these comparisons between football and basketball,
[4:20] there are clear differences in how the sports are played,
[4:23] right? And again, the shot clock in
[4:26] basketball makes that a little bit different, right, In so far
[4:29] as just 24 seconds. So as I always say, when all
[4:34] five players on the floor are quote, UN quote weaponized, that
[4:39] is harder for defenses to scheme against, right?
[4:42] As opposed to running single high pick and roll where you're
[4:45] like, all right, all we gotta do is really worry about this dude.
[4:48] Everybody else will live with them taking the shot late
[4:51] because the chances are they're likely going to miss.
[4:53] Yes, they're NBA players, but they're not as good as this
[4:55] person, right? And so that's one number two,
[4:59] his idea of like ticky Taka, whatever.
[5:00] Look, ultimately all the Golden State Warriors offense is, is
[5:04] that it is a motion based offense, right?
[5:06] And it's a motion based offense that is a hybrid of the the
[5:09] offense that Steve Kerr played under in his without his
[5:12] basketball career all the way back to when he played at
[5:14] Arizona under under Lude Olson, his time in Chicago with Phil
[5:17] Jackson and Tex Winter on the triangle and it's time under
[5:19] Gregg Popovich, right? Do you remember the Spurs
[5:21] championship team that won in 20 whatever the one they beat the
[5:25] LeBron and and the Cat 14. That ball was constantly moving
[5:30] around on the perimeter, right? Swing swing, swing, swing.
[5:33] And the idea there is that the ball travels faster than a man
[5:37] can travel right. And so all the goal is for any
[5:41] sport is to get your opponent on defense to be out of shape,
[5:44] right. Create an overload or a mismatch
[5:47] in one area that you can then exploit for an easy score.
[5:50] That's it. You want to dress it up as
[5:52] sticky talk out there. It's try it's all does the same
[5:55] thing at the end. So this idea that it's, you
[5:58] know, Steve showed us Tiki T.O.K and that's what we do.
[6:00] It's like, OK, it's not. It's again, as a story and in
[6:03] marketing, that sounds great, right?
[6:05] But in reality, that's not what it is.
[6:07] The other key component of this to Sid is this works well when
[6:13] you have literally the greatest shooter of all time on your
[6:15] squad. And Steph Mccurry, OK, again,
[6:17] what his gravity does and what he's allowed to do, Anybody who
[6:21] watches it knows it. They don't pull it out often,
[6:23] but it works because the defense is so worried about Steph's
[6:27] constant movement. It causes defenders to overreact
[6:30] and freak out, right? They lose their mind because
[6:33] they see him as a threat and not anybody else, right?
[6:36] So I think he's involved in a screen, a brush screen, a veer
[6:40] screen or, or just him running. Everybody's hyper alert to him
[6:45] running because they're like yo, make sure you got to make sure
[6:46] you got because the ball will swing to him eventually.
[6:50] What that causes now is for you to forget about your primary
[6:53] assignment. That player instead of standing
[6:55] there, all he has to do is move a little bit.
[6:57] Now he's got tons of space. The ball finds them wide open
[7:00] layout, mega second pass, wide open 3 right.
[7:03] So again, it is more about using the special talents of a
[7:08] particular player and what that allows you to do when you run a
[7:12] motion offense where all five players on the floor touch the
[7:15] ball in a possession. Yeah.
[7:18] And I would say, and honestly that's where I think the big
[7:22] difference is the Warriors offense was trying to weaponize
[7:26] the off ball movement of its best players and therefore it's
[7:31] weaker ball handlers had time on the ball.
[7:33] The Ticketaka offense is trying to essentially weaponize the
[7:37] offense through every single player individually.
[7:40] And so every single player has to be elite offensively to
[7:44] execute it. And so the Warriors offense can
[7:48] be executed by some players who just can't shoot the ball.
[7:50] But you take something like. Draymond yeah, that's not a
[7:54] great shooter. Right, right.
[7:56] But like you take like something like Man City now or the
[7:59] Celtics, who I think are more authentic to this idea of ball
[8:04] movement for the sake of it to get someone open.
[8:06] I think these teams, they need skill everywhere.
[8:08] If you if they don't have that superlative skill at every
[8:10] position, they can't execute their style at all.
[8:13] Whereas. And so I think that is a huge
[8:16] difference. But I will say the shot clock's
[8:18] the other thing, the big difference like in Tiki Taka,
[8:21] you're doing this because there's no shot clock.
[8:24] So your style can be both defensive and offensive.
[8:26] Whereas for the Warriors it's a purely offensive tactic.
[8:30] It's not with defense in mind at all.
[8:32] And that's again, why you don't need very skilled players at the
[8:36] weaker positions because there's a shot clock, so they don't need
[8:38] to be able to hold on the ball against tough ball pressure.
[8:41] But in soccer, you need a busquettes to make ticky taka
[8:44] work. Like the level of player you
[8:46] need all over the pitch is different.
[8:47] And that's why I think I find it so funny.
[8:49] It's like, oh, no, it's not the same.
[8:50] No, it's like, you guys are too great who are weaponizing we
[8:54] worser players. Whereas for Barcelona, every
[8:57] player was fucking incredible off the charts.
[8:59] That's why they could execute it.
[9:01] And yeah, just to touch on the actual origins, like, yeah, the
[9:04] he just combined his Bulls offense with Jordan coming off
[9:06] the ball with the San Antonio offense of making the extra
[9:09] pass. And then you combine that, you
[9:11] get the Warriors offense. And it's just so funny to me
[9:14] that they market it as from Barcelona.
[9:16] They're it's funny to me that he's, if you say like Phil
[9:19] Jackson and Gregg Popovich, no one's going to click on it.
[9:21] So no one cares, you know? It's not.
[9:23] Yeah, again, it's storytelling, right?
[9:26] It's a better story if you say it this way.
[9:28] It is it. Is.
[9:29] And again, it's not to say that Steve did not show them clips of
[9:33] yes, he did. That's I'm not saying that he or
[9:36] they're lying. They 100% did that because there
[9:39] is truth to getting off the ball.
[9:42] Again, holding on to the ball, first of all, shot clock, which
[9:45] you mentioned, right, it allows the defense to load up when we
[9:49] know it's going to be isolation. Only one guy is going to handle
[9:51] or sit on it for 7/7 seconds, right?
[9:54] That makes our lives so much easier on defense.
[9:56] You know what makes our lives harder on defense?
[9:58] If the ball is pinging and everybody's moving, that means I
[10:01] have to constantly be thinking. That's ultimately all you want
[10:03] is that you want the defense to be constantly thinking because
[10:06] they're not they're thinking, they're not reacting, right?
[10:09] And now it's like, oh, crap, layup.
[10:11] This won't like if you watch the best offenses move And when
[10:14] offenses are humming and how they get even elite defenses to
[10:17] get out of position, it's because the defense has no time
[10:20] to think, right? The great QB, Brown says this
[10:22] all the time. We set screens for one reason,
[10:25] to make defenders think because you have to say, OK, the
[10:27] screen's coming. What is my responsibility?
[10:30] Are we switching? Are we hedge?
[10:31] Am I going over the top all? And again, you don't have 10
[10:35] seconds to think about this. It has to be running through
[10:37] your mind while you are moving. So if everybody around you is
[10:41] also moving that that can create a situation where now you're out
[10:44] of balance, right? And that's all you want is the
[10:46] defense to be stretched out of balance. 2 guys go to the ball
[10:49] when they shouldn't. Great.
[10:50] Now we got four on three and all this acres of space.
[10:52] And again, why it works so well with Golden State is because of
[10:56] Steph's shooting ability in his range.
[10:58] It isn't just something some guy who shoots threes.
[10:59] You got to guard him at 40 feet, right?
[11:01] Someone has to be with him at 40 feet.
[11:03] OK, So that that means space now behind me.
[11:06] Two less people are occupying all this space now.
[11:08] And now we have a clear advantage.
[11:10] That's what you want. So how how does it work for
[11:12] these guys when they come out and tell everyone it's the tiki
[11:15] Taka and not like like you said you were you kind of have talked
[11:18] to the players before. So you have like you have an
[11:20] idea of what happened. Like what I mean, I'm sure
[11:23] there's APR guy that's just like, hey, this is like like I'm
[11:26] sure all these guys have APR guy that's like, hey, this will
[11:28] these words will hit the algo. Go say it now like it's it's.
[11:31] It's less calculated than that than like Raymond Ritter, the
[11:34] word is PR guy saying this will hit the algo.
[11:36] And more of these guys are all trained in media relations on
[11:40] how to say things without saying things, right.
[11:44] It's much easier to tell the story of, yo, he showed us
[11:47] Barcelona clips and this is what happened.
[11:49] And they say, well, actually, when we're running a motion
[11:51] offense and you have their single right, it just gets too
[11:54] minutiae in the weeds. And as much as people like us
[11:57] and fans like us like the intricacies of either sport
[12:01] said, as you know, most fans don't give a shit about that.
[12:03] They don't want to hear that because it's they're going to
[12:05] tune it out. It's too technical and it's too
[12:07] boring. They want to hear, Oh, you just
[12:09] do a Barcelona because that's easy.
[12:11] That makes their their synapses fire.
[12:13] Oh, I know they had that messy guy, messy Steph, right?
[12:15] They can make the easy parallels in their brain and go, this is
[12:19] perfect, by the way, that's a human thing.
[12:21] We we want to categorize things and make things simple.
[12:25] Chair lamp. So we don't want to have to be
[12:28] like, well, this is kind of a chair, but really it can
[12:31] function as a no too much thought process.
[12:34] Simple. Our brains want to lock onto
[12:36] what we can categorize, identify simple.
[12:38] And when you were working media, right?
[12:40] And when you want things that are easy, digestible crunches,
[12:43] you can throw out the news and that's how you build up
[12:45] narrative. And that's how it spreads like
[12:46] wildfire. And then all of a sudden it
[12:47] becomes Golden State Warriors are FC Barcelona and basketball
[12:51] right like it it? It's just easier to do it that
[12:54] way than to actually breakdown what is happening on a
[12:56] fundamental play by play level. Yeah, I hate to admit that the
[13:00] Celtics got the closest of. I will say it doesn't bring me
[13:03] any pleasure to admit that and that they were a good team.
[13:07] I really hate it. But hey, that team is over, so I
[13:10] will. I guess I get to say.
[13:11] That it's, it's, it's you. Look at that squad, though, took
[13:15] about five guys on the floor, weaponized, right?
[13:19] So you have Tatum brown Porzingis right, like Derek
[13:23] white. I mean, I mean all five guys can
[13:27] do pass triple, triple threat, right?
[13:30] In basketball. We all know what that is right?
[13:32] You want a place where you can pass triple or shoot right?
[13:34] If all five guys can do that, guess what that means now
[13:38] bullshit. I can't really help often go
[13:40] double because I'm leaving another person wide open who can
[13:43] do all the things right? Like this is what you want.
[13:46] And when you add that to everyone touches the ball and
[13:50] everybody's constantly moving, that creates chaos When you're
[13:52] trying to defend that, nothing but chaos.
[13:54] Yeah, and I think what people loved about Barcelona was that
[13:57] as great as Messi was wonder Guardiola, yes, they would also
[14:01] win through sequences of him just doing things only he can,
[14:04] but they'd also win through moments of just overwhelming the
[14:07] other team, through these ball movement because all their
[14:09] players, Chavi and yes, they were so good and was.
[14:12] Good. Yep, and and the Celtics
[14:14] definitely got close to capturing the spirit.
[14:17] Yeah, I hate to admit, it was really one of the great
[14:18] offenses. Do you hate to imagine because
[14:20] you're a Lakers fan, you hate the Celtics?
[14:22] That I will say a big difference, yes, but also the I
[14:25] will say this, there is one difference like the Celtics's
[14:29] best players were not close to like messy Steph, LeBron.
[14:32] And so they could they could choke, but they were so
[14:35] overwhelmingly talented. That's where it's interesting,
[14:37] because Barcelona talkers different.
[14:39] Like, you still needed messy sometimes and like, the attacker
[14:42] still has to do it, but the Celtics were so good that Tatum
[14:45] and Brown could just totally throw up on themselves in crunch
[14:48] time and they'd still win. And that that made me like
[14:51] little jealous, honestly. Like, why can't my best players
[14:53] get that sort of like, margin for error?
[14:55] You know They had the biggest margin of error ever of any 2.
[14:58] Well, I think that's what you want though, right?
[14:59] Is that the whole goal in sports is how do I increase my margin
[15:02] for error, right? The slimmer it is, the harder
[15:04] it's gonna be for me to win. I want as big a margin of error
[15:06] as possible, right? That's how you have a true
[15:08] dominant team. And you do that because you
[15:10] literally have five guys. Let's not forget you add
[15:12] Porzingis to that squad, right? Like, OK, like now you have this
[15:15] Unicorn. So now it's size on top of that
[15:17] where it's like, and he can write.
[15:19] It's just unlocks different things and you have Horford
[15:21] coming off the bench. Like it's just it does so much
[15:24] right. And everyone, again, everyone is
[15:26] weaponized. If you go back to basketball in
[15:27] the 80s and 90s, there are guys who I probably who I likely
[15:30] believe were told by their coach, do not shoot the
[15:32] basketball when you get it right because they were just
[15:35] unskilled. You cannot survive in today's
[15:37] NBA like that. If you are, you know, it used to
[15:40] be, you can have guys who can only be defenders on the floor.
[15:43] Could those guys get played out of the league, play at the floor
[15:45] now? Because it's like, look, man,
[15:47] we're going to back off you and and if your offense is not
[15:51] sophisticated enough to mask your deficiency in shooting,
[15:54] we're going to leave it to you so that at the end of that shot
[15:56] clock, you got the hot grenade out of 28 feet.
[15:59] Shoot it. We know we're not worried it's
[16:00] going to be an air ball or a brick and we're going to go the
[16:02] other way. Yeah, no, the the floor of the
[16:06] problem solver you need in the worst position's gone up.
[16:08] Like your worst player still needs to be able to solve some
[16:10] problems offensively. I just find it.
[16:13] I just find it funny that the Celtics got to a point where
[16:16] because those guys net like never really figured out how to
[16:18] be clutch. Even in the Finals, they were
[16:20] like missing and and they still had such a humming offense that
[16:24] ran Despite that. That's a system if I've ever
[16:27] seen one. Like, it's pretty crazy and
[16:31] really impressed by that. But but yeah, that was fun
[16:34] little chat, Gerard. It was fun to at least remind
[16:38] people where the real origins were.
[16:39] And you know, if you want it, at least go watch the eclipse,
[16:41] Scott. Watch the eclipse of Jordan's
[16:43] triangle. Go watch the clips of San
[16:45] Antonio. You'll see Golden State there.
[16:47] We're not. We're not just saying this
[16:48] because we're Real Madrid fans. Yeah.
[16:50] And watch Ludo Olson offenses in Arizona.
[16:52] Like again, you are a product of your environment and all the
[16:56] best basketball minds that you were shaped by, right?
[16:58] Like that, that that's Curt's philosophy.
[17:00] And yes, and we talk about this, you know, we often have people
[17:03] come into the comments and always say stop comparing this
[17:05] to best. Well, this is not the NBA, this
[17:06] is football. And it's like, yeah, but the
[17:08] best in any industry borrow processes from other industries
[17:13] because at the end of the day, it's about it's a people
[17:15] business, right? Like what is working so well for
[17:18] you here that I can take that will work for me in my sport,
[17:21] right? And there's things you can do,
[17:23] right? The best, the best who do that
[17:25] are the innovators. That's one of the greatest
[17:27] coaches of all time, right? Like.
[17:29] Definitely. Thank you all for tuning in.
[17:32] Please like, subscribe, leave comments.
[17:33] We'll be back with more episodes soon.
[17:36] Take care.

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