An unexpected Warriors vs. Pelicans recap
The Jordan Poole/JTA two man game, Smailagic's last goodbye (I hope), and other assorted thoughts
So I’m doing something I didn’t think I’d be doing any time soon and writing what amounts to a game recap. I wanted to do this for each playoff game — assuming the Warriors advance out of the play-in tournament — but I’m going on an impulsive vacation/first date in Hawaii at the end of May and now I’m not sure I’ll even get to see half of those playoff games. I was hoping that my playoff recaps would be a good way to cut my teeth and get used to delivering thoughtful content on deadlines, but uh, yeah, I don’t really think I’m going to be watching a lot of playoff basketball when I’m in Hawaii. So I figured that tonight’s meaningless game against the New Orleans Pelicans would be a good way to test my writing chops in a low stakes game.
Even though Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, and Draymond Green missed tonight’s game against the Pelicans, I thought this would be an interesting game to watch because of its possible implications for Steve Kerr’s playoff rotations. At this point in the season the aforementioned Steph, Wiggins, and Draymond are known quantities and I’d say the same thing about Jordan Poole, Kent Bazemore, Damion Lee (health notwithstanding), Juan Toscano-Anderson, and Kevon Looney. We know what those players look like at their best and their worst and the only question I have about any of those guys is how often they will perform up to their idealized selves.
I don’t really expect that any of Mychal Mulder, Eric Paschall, Gary Payton II, or Jordan Bell become rotation mainstays in the playoffs, but I’d assume that Steve Kerr saw tonight’s game against the Pelicans as a chance to evaluate their ability to contribute emergency minutes. So in light of that, I thought it would be interesting to see how well those fringe rotation players would execute Kerr’s system.
I was also particularly interested to see how Juan Toscano-Anderson would look in his first real extended run without Steph and/or Draymond since his NBA debut last February and I think that’s as good a place as any to begin this recap. Juan’s near triple double of 9 points, 9 assists, and 9 rebounds set the pace for the Warriors and his synergy with Jordan Pooole on pick and rolls and dribble handoffs opened up a world of possibilities within Steve Kerr’s offense.
The Juan/Poole two-man game.
In the first quarter alone, Juan had 5 assists and the national announcers gushed about the reads he made in two man games with Poole. One particular sequence at the 7:35 mark or so really stood out: Jordan Poole threw the ball over to JTA on the right wing and Juan instinctively moved into a DHO set, much in the way Draymond does time and time again for Steph, and pitched the ball back to Poole who was now using Juan’s DHO as a screen. But rather than make hard hard contact with Poole’s defender, Juan slipped the screen and cut to the hoop, at which point Poole skipped a perfect bounce pass to him. The very next possession, Juan hit a cutting Poole from the top of the key with a one handed bounce pass thrown just ahead of Poole’s defender and Hubie Brown, as he did many times last night, gushed at Poole and JTA’s chemistry.
Those were just two of the many instances of gorgeous ball movement involving one of or both of Juan and Poole. Copied directly from my notes on the first half:
Poole good PNR with Looney (highest PPP on roll man on team) at 11:43, JTA 3rd assist?
Gorgeous semi transition pass to Poole (a corner look thank god!),
5 assists for JTA, 3 for Poole, cool cool
Announcers loving Poole at 7:09 2nd Q.
Hubie says Poole has good feet and comes off of screens extremely well
Gorgeous euro from Poole/foul at 5:15 2nd Q after rejecting JTA screen to burst into lane
My god what a pass from Poole at 3:49 2nd Q, deep in paint tosses one handed to top of the key for Mulder
JTA gorgeous pass at 2:37 from top of key to Poole cutting baseline ish
A bit embarrassing how much I overuse the adjective “gorgeous,” but I digress. Poole and Juan’s performance in the first half was the most optimistic version of how the Warriors’ bench unit could look without Steph and Draymond. And in a funny twist, they looked as good as they did, well, because... they kept doing Steph and Draymond things. Seriously!
Let’s take another look at that Poole/JTA DHO —> slip screen I was so enamored by.
Does that not look like something that Steph and Draymond do multiple times a game? It’s just one of many plays, but moments like that make me genuinely excited about the Warriors’ bench unit for the first time since... Jarrett Jack was our backup point guard? As many warm fuzzy feelings we might get about the Livingston/Barbosa/Iguodala/Barnes/Speights lineups of the early Kerr years, those bench lineups put up a -5 net rating for two years straight and never got above 96 ORTG. The Warriors under Kerr have never really had a bench lineup that can score, but the emergence of Jordan Poole as a credible lead guard changes things, especially if he’s going to have his own mini-Draymond who knows where he is at all times and knows when to pass, shoot, and drive to the lane.
A fun byproduct of Jordan Poole getting to start in Steph’s absence was that we got to see him run point guard pretty much whenever he was on the court. My above bullet pointed notes mostly focus on the Juan/Poole two man game, but I also noted several instances where Poole got deep into the paint only to fire an absolute bullet right into the shooting pocket of Mychal Mulder, who had 20 points on 6-9 from three in the first half of last night’s meaningless game. Given that Mulder seems to perform best in games with little to no stakes, I doubt he’ll be on the roster next year, but watching Mulder chuck threes off of perfect Poole pocket passes is lots fun fun, in large part because it’s even more fun to imagine what those sequences would like with Klay Thompson or Justinian Jessup on the receiving end of those passes.
At the end of the first half, which is really where I stopped paying full attention (I had some issues with my cell phone that had to get resolved prior to my flight to California and then the power went out for much of the fourth quarter), JTA had an absolutely silly line of 4 points, 5 rebounds, and 8 assists, while Jordan Poole had 24 points on only two made threes. On the whole, the Warriors looked like a very coherent team in the first half and took an 18 point lead into halftime.
The rest of the game
So as I mentioned, I was really only able to give my full attention to the first half of this game. I was still somewhat watching when Jordan Poole went down with what I feared was a catastrophic ankle injury and was pretty shocked that he came back to finish the game. In my notes, a stray thought about Poole that brings to mind Steph Curry’s ability to capture your entire attention:“Poole back in but why? — I will say this, the moment Poole comes back in I find myself more interested in watching again.”
The only other real things of note for me in last night’s game was the return of Jordan Bell. I thought he was fine ish, but not really a needle mover. He’s still a solid defender and he made some nice passes (as well as a very noticeable boner where he and Poole miscommunicated a cut and backdoor pass), but he’s still probably at his best as a complimentary piece on an offensively loaded team, like, say, the 2017-18 Warriors. This team is very obviously not that, so while he’s useful defensively, Bell really does very little as a lob threat or scoring threat for this Warriors team.
Nico Mannion played, which annoys me on principle, but he did have two fancy behind the bak passes and he did hit a few nice jumpers off of the dribble. That’s good, because without a credible jumpshot, Nico has no NBA future as he’s shooting a heinous 38.4% in the paint this year.
Alen Smailagic also played, in the generous sense of the term, but there’s really nothing to be gleaned from his minutes. It is glaringly obvious that Smailagic is not an NBA player, although I will admit his pump fake is absolutely elite and absolutely wasted on a player who shoots and does everything else so poorly. Smailagic somehow played 19 minutes last night, and I’d be shocked if he played another minute for the Warriors, let alone in the NBA.
Eric Paschall made his return last night as well, but it seems that I missed most of his meaningful minutes between my cell phone issue and the 4th quarter power outage. I did however, catch two jump shots from Paschall, which is always an adventure. I noted after the first shot, “somehow looks even uglier than I remember — legs splayed out in opposite directions north south wtf?” The second one I caught, a made three, actually looked... normal? I’ll go back and watch the tape, but my notes claim that Paschall’s legs actually stayed mostly in place and didn’t splay out in all directions.
Kent Bazemore and Kevon Looney did their thing, there’s really not much value in wasting time trying to predict anything from their minutes. They are who they are, for better and worse and I’m more interested in seeing them in the playoffs than I am writing about their performance in a meaningless game against the Pelicans.
Although last night’s game was meaningless, it was still somewhat fun and I wish I’d been able to catch all of it. When the power came back on in my house, I was scrambling to get some things done so I missed most of the fourth quarter until the final minute or so of the game. I was lucky enough to see Jordan Poole hit the game-winning shot off of an explosive burst to the hoop for his 38th point. As he did for much of the game, Hubie Brown marveled again at Poole’s footwork and how it lets him get to his spots efficiently and with real burst. There won’t be many people who remember this game, save for maybe Poole — that is, until he sets a new career high in points scored — but that’s how I’ll remember tonight’s game; Hubie Brown marveling at Jordan Poole, a player so many people were ready to leave for dead last year who has now become an essential part of the Warriors’ future.