Mitchell Leff/Getty Images
Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein’s weekly N.B.A. newsletter here.
PHILADELPHIA — Every now and then, along comes an N.B.A. team that takes conventional wisdom and shoves it aside.
There were the Boston Celtics who in 2002 unexpectedly made it to the Eastern Conference finals by launching 3-pointers without a conscience, at a time when games were won by tall centers who roamed the paint. There were the 2014-15 Golden State Warriors, who let Stephen Curry — a slender wizard with the basketball — lead a small-ball revolution.