The 2021-22 Golden State Warriors season-in-review: Quinndary Weatherspoon
Weatherspoon's performance in 11 regular-season NBA games, looking at his role in the G-League and a shot chart that might not reflect his NBA role, and a possible Gary Payton II comparison.
Quinndary Weatherspoon: B
In late December of 2021, the Warriors signed former San Antonio Spurs guard, Quinndary Weatherspoon, to a 10-day hardship contract after multiple Warriors players contracted COVID-19. Weatherspoon made his Warriors’ debut in a road game against the Phoenix Suns on Christmas Day. This was one of the most highly anticipated match-ups of the season; the Warriors and Suns were battling for the #1 seed in the west, but the Warriors were without Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, and Damion Lee. The Warriors’ wing corps was reduced to a collection of 4’s — Otto Porter Jr., Juan Toscano-Anderson, Jonathan Kuminga — and Gary Payton II. None of those players is really a wing player in today’s NBA and so the Warriors really only had Steph Curry and Quinndary Weatherspoon available at the guard position.
Weatherspoon entered the game in the first quarter and scored his first bucket as a Warrior after stealing the ball from Cameron Payne:
In the second quarter, Weatherspoon was tasked with guarding Chris Paul and did reasonably well:
A few minutes later, Weatherspoon showed an intuitive understanding of the Warriors’ offense when he cut into a baseline layup out of a split action set:
The most impressive moment of Weatherspoons’ debut came late in the third quarter when he made an Andre-hands strip of a Devin Booker post-up:
Quinndary Weatherspoon only played significant minutes in three other games with the Warriors, two of which were load-management games for their veterans. Those games were, in effect, glorified G-League contests so I won’t waste many words on those. But in March, the Warriors faced the Boston Celtics and Steph Curry and Moses Moody both came out of the game with injuries. It was under those circumstances that Weatherspoon was called into action again. Weatherspoon played 15 minutes in what eventually became a blowout loss, but he showed flashes in his minutes, particularly on defense:
Because Weatherspoon played so few games for the Warriors, we only have tiny sample sizes to judge him by. We’ll glance briefly at his NBA stats, but mostly look at his G-League numbers and later on, his Summer League performance.
Quinndary Weatherspoon’s NBA statistical profile:
11 games played, 6.6 minutes a game, 2.7 points, 1.3 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.3 turnovers, 0.1 steals, 0.1 blocks, and 1.4 fouls per game.
57.1% FG, 20 3P%, 100% FT, 64.7 TS% (+8.1% league-average TS), 59.5% EFG (+6.3% league-average EFG).
1.9 FGA, 0.5 3PA, 0.5 FTA
BBREF: 123 ORTG, 109 DRTG, -12.8 +/- on/off per 100 poss., 0.0 VORP, 1.49 WS/48, 15.7% USG.
NBA.com: 110.8 ORTG, 119.4 DRTG, -8.6 net rating, 15.0% USG.
-1.04 ORPM, -3.32 DRPM, -4.36 RPM (#438 rank of 557 players).
Quinndary’s sample size of minutes and games played is so small that it’s practically meaningless. Cleaning the Glass only registered 61 non-garbage time minutes for Weatherspoon this past season. In those minutes, Weatherspoon had a +0.3 net rating and the Warriors were -1.6 points worse per 100 possessions with him on the court. Take that for what it’s worth. The various composite impact metrics (EPM, BPM, RPM) don’t have much data on Weatherspoon, so let’s move on from those.
Quinndary Weatherspoon’s G-League statistical profile:
20 regular-season games played, 31.4 minutes a game, 25.3 points, 6.7 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 3.7 turnovers, 2.0 steals, 0.7 blocks, and 3.2 fouls a game.
51.8% FG, 28.2 3P%, 60.9% TS, 56.1% EFG.
19.1 FGA, 3.9 3PA, 2.8 FTA.
108.4 ORTG, 106.5 DRTG, +1.9 net rating, 31.4% USG.
18.3 AST%, 5.0 OREB%, 14.8% DREB%, 9.8% TREB, 12.9% TOV, 0.92 AST/TO
Quinndary Weatherspoon was the G-League’s 5th leading scorer this past season and his numbers reflect an outsized offensive role that he’s unlikely to get with the big-league Warriors team. Weatherspoon played the 9th most regular-season games of any Santa Cruz Warrior last season and only Moses Moody took more shots per game than he did. In the regular season, only James Wiseman had a higher USG% than Weatherspoon, but Weatherspoon only had the 11th highest TOV% of any Santa Cruz Warrior. This is impressive considering that he averaged more turnovers per game than assists.
Another thing that sticks out to me: Weatherspoon averaged 6.7 rebounds a game despite standing only 6’3. Weatherspoon’s DREB% of 9.8 would have been the 7th highest of any qualifying guard in the NBA this past season and his OREB% of 5.0 would be the highest of any guard. Weatherspoon’s rebounding numbers compare favorably but fall slightly short of Gary Payton II’s, who barely missed the qualifying threshold for BBREf’s league leaders, and had a TREB of 10.8% and an OREB of 6.5%.
Out of curiosity, I took a look at GPII’s G-League stats to see how viable this point of reference for Weatherspoon is. In Payton’s G-League career, he averaged 2.4 steals per game with a career-best of 3.0 steals per game in the 2018-19 season. Weatherspoon’s career-high came this past season with 2.1 steals per game and he also increased his rebounding significantly from a previous high of 3.9 rebounds a game while GPII’s rebounding peaked at 9.3 a game in 31.3 minutes during the 2019-20 season.
Payton II and Weatherspoon also had fairly similar shot distributions during their G-League careers. GPII took the most three-pointers of his career during the 2016-17 season when took 4.9 a game and with each passing season, he took more two-pointers as a total distribution of his shots, which is also more or less what Weatherspoon has done in his G-League career.
Quinndary Weatherspoon’s G-League shooting profile:
Restricted area: 65.8% on 149 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 53.3% on 120 attempts.
Mid-range: 41.5% on 41 attempts.
Left corner 3: 0% on 3 attempts.
Right corner 3: 0% on 1 attempt.
Above the break 3: 29.7% on 74 attempts.
Floaters: 45.4% on 33 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 58.3% on 216 attempts.
FGM% assisted: 54.7%
FGM% unassisted: 45.3%
The stat-keeping for the G-League is far less robust than it is for the NBA but we still have some interesting numbers to pore over. Quinndary Weatherspoon was a very good finisher in the G-League and his 65.8% in the restricted area would rank among the elite for guards. What is most interesting to me about Weatherspoon’s diet of shots is that he took on a significant creation role for the Santa Cruz Warriors with nearly half of his field-goal makes coming unassisted. 65% of Weatherspoon’s field goal attempts in the G-League came in the paint and 46.9% of his makes in the paint were unassisted while only 20% of his field-goal attempts came from deep.
Remarkably, Weatherspoon only took four threes from the corner in the G-League and the other 74 attempts came from above the break. 7 of his 22 makes on above-the-break threes were unassisted. You’d figure that Weatherspoon will not be taking many, if any unassisted threes from the top of the key if he plays rotation minutes for the Warriors, so it’s curious that he took so few shots from the corner. Dating back to Weatherspoon’s 2019-20 G-League stint, he’s only taken 13 corner threes in regular-season games, so while he demonstrates promise as an interiors scorer at the guard, Weatherspoon isn’t a dead ringer for Gary Payton II as someone who spots up and cuts from the corner.
Instead, Weatherspoon is someone who can get to the hoop with the ball in his hands and score at a fairly efficient clip. You’d expect that Weatherspoon will have more opportunities to cut into his buckets if he plays rotation minutes next season, but his ability to create shots in the paint could be useful if he plays in lineups with real floor spacing. The kind people at @GSWReddit have long sung the praises of Weatherspoon and they compiled some good footage of him in the past season. I’ve highlighted a few clips that show Weatherspoon’s prowess as a scorer below. Take note of his ability to get into the paint both with and without the ball in his hands:
Here is a shot chart of Quinndary Weatherspoon’s 2021-22 G-League season:
Here is Quinndary Weatherspoon’s shot chart in NBA games this past season from Positive Residual:
The lineup stats!
I’m not all that interested in the lineup stats for Weatherspoon’s G-League stint, so we’ll go to his most-used Cleaning the Glass’ non-garbage time lineups for his NBA minutes this past season and I’ve filtered out lineups including Chris Chiozza because I really want to see what Weatherspoon’s numbers look like alongside NBA players. I’ve highlighted the positive lineups below in green.
These sample sizes are so small that they are practically meaningless. There’s only one lineup listed here that played real minutes together with Steph Curry and it is positive. That lineup played its minutes during the Warriors’ Christmas day victory against the Phoenix Suns and it is interesting insofar as it provided us a possible glimpse into how Weatherspoon might play alongside NBA talent. The other lineups in the list are from games where the Warriors’ veteran core sat out.
What is next for Quinndary Weatherspoon?
The Warriors re-signed Quinndary Weatherspoon to a two-way contract a few days ago and there is a chance that he plays himself into a full-time contract at some point this season. As it stands right now, the Warriors expect to have 13 roster spots filled, at least until Andre Iguodala decides whether or not he wants to play another season. Weatherspoon would figure to have the best chance of any of their non-roster players to earn a guaranteed contract, whether it be in training camp or in a JTA-style conversion later in the regular season.
Weatherspoon played a featured role for the Warriors in the Summer League. You can see his numbers below:
I’ve also included some clips from his Summer League stint:
It’s important to remember that the role Weatherspoon is playing in these clips as an on-ball creator is not one he’s likely to play with the Warriors next season. But the potential he has as a secondary creator who can get into the paint to take his own shot or kick it out to an open shooter could create a path for him to earn more minutes and a bigger role for the Warriors. In the absence of Gary Payton II, the Warriors will lose their most efficient and prolific interior scorer. The Warriors will need to find easy buckets in the paint. Second-year forward, Jonathan Kuminga, is likely to get a lot of the minutes that Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. played last season, but Weatherspoon seems like a more natural successor to GPII’s role as a point-of-attack defender and interior scorer from the guard position.
Weatherspoon has a few things working against him: for one, he hasn’t proved that he can shoot from the corner, which makes him a less than ideal fit for the GPII role, and he’ll have to fight Donte DiVincenzo, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kuminga for bench minutes at the guard/wing position. But if Weatherspoon can hit the occasional three, cut into open buckets, and occasionally create his own shots in the paint, he may find himself in a position to force himself onto the Warriors’ roster.
The Warriors, who are already in luxury tax hell, would have to pay a significant tax on Weatherspoon’s guaranteed contract if he forced his way onto the roster, but the best case scenario where he makes himself indispensable is probably one the Warriors would welcome. As Gary Payton II proved last season, sometimes a fringe-roster player can become key contributor to a contending team by offering an unusual and valuable skillset. For the Warriors’ sake, I hope that Weatherspoon forces them to make the painful economic consideration about whether or not to put him on the full-time roster as it’s never a bad thing to have quality guards who can defend and finish at the rim.