The 2021-22 Golden State Warriors season-in-review: Chris Chiozza
Chiozza's struggle to put the ball in the hoop, his historically bad drives to the hoop and sky-high turnover rate, and Steve Kerr's frustrating affinity for pass-first point guards.
Chris Chiozza: D
In the summer of 2021, the Golden State Warriors signed former Brooklyn Nets guard, Chris Chiozza, to a two-way contract. Steph Curry and Jordan Poole figured to play the bulk of minutes at the point guard position with Andre Iguodala slotting in as a secondary ball-handler and third-string point guard, health provided. Given the advanced ages of Iguodala and Curry, it seemed likely that Chiozza would soak up a decent share of minutes. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only on-court value that Chiozza offered to the Warriors.
In his four previous seasons at the NBA level, Chiozza actually had pretty great plus/minus stats and net rating differentials, albeit mostly in mop-up minutes. I even remember a few tweets circulating last summer about Chiozza being an advanced stats darling during his two seasons with the Brooklyn Nets. But in his 34 games with the Warriors, Chiozza was brutally inefficient on offense and opposing teams went out of their way to pick on him defensively. Chiozza’s inability to create shots for himself turned him into a turnover machine, particularly on drives to the hoop, which negated his theoretical abilities as a risk-averse, table-setting point guard.
Chris Chiozza’s place on the Warriors’ roster seemed like it was owed to two factors: his connection to former Brooklyn Nets coach and current Warriors’ assistant, Kenny Atkinson, and his reputation as a “true” point guard. Steve Kerr has had a long-standing soft spot for the fabled “true” point guard — the platonic ideal of a low-turnover ball-handler who creates shots for his teammates and runs the team’s offense before looking for his own shot.
Chiozza’s inclination to look for his teammates was a noble one, but it actually worked against him and he was quite turnover-prone during his Warriors stint. Couple that with his defensive shortcomings and inability to put the ball in the hoop efficiently— this also applies to his G-League stats this past season where he shot 34/28/100 splits — and it makes sense that Chiozza is, as far as I can tell, sitting at home with no offers to join an NBA team or a professional team overseas.
As far as my memory serves, Chiozza only had two notable games that helped the Warriors in a meaningful way on the court. On his 26th birthday, Chiozza got first-half minutes against the Toronto Raptors and made some nice reads playing off of Steph Curry, including this guard-to-guard pick-and-roll:
Later in the season, Chiozza played a key role in a comeback victory on the road against the San Antonio Spurs. The Warriors, who sat most of their veteran core during this load-management game in early February, trailed by 15 points going into the fourth quarter. Chris Chiozza played nearly the entire final period and the Warriors were +17 in those minutes. On that night, Chiozza’s table-setting ways worked and he helped generate good looks for lineups that included Quinndary Weatherspoon and Jonathan Kuminga in the frontcourt. This assist by Chiozza showed solid court vision and understanding of the Warriors’ pet offensive sets:
That game against the Spurs, was, however, pretty much the last time that Chiozza provided any on-court utility to the Warriors. When Steph Curry got hurt in mid-March, Chiozza was forced into back-up point guard minutes as Andre Iguodala was still nursing the various ailments that forced him to miss nearly half of the season. The Warriors went into a tailspin in the two weeks following Curry’s injury and during a low point of the season, they lost a road game to a tanking Orlando Magic team. With no Curry or Iguodala, a road game against a tanking team profiled as the exact type of game that Chiozza was acquired to play in, but he played only four minutes that game and Draymond Green operated as the Warriors’ back-up point guard.
Chiozza played in just two more regular-season games, a road win against the Miami Heat that Green, Klay Thompson, and Otto Porter Jr. sat out for, and a blowout loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on the road. At a time in the season when the Warriors could have used just one more capable ball-handler, Chiozza was so ineffective that he couldn’t earn minutes for the very role he was earmarked for.
That begs the question, could another NBA player have provided more value to the Warriors on a two-way contract? I’m inclined to say yes. The Warriors basically played Russian roulette with their center position the entire season as James Wiseman’s rehab from a meniscus tear got derailed on two separate instances and the front office declined to add another frontcourt player. Kevon Looney very publicly made it his goal to play all 82 games, which is an admirable goal, but the Warriors basically had no insurance against a potential injury to Looney, save for Nemanja Bjelica. A Looney injury would have turned Bjelica into the only healthy center on the roster and forced 4’s like Jonathan Kuminga, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Otto Porter Jr., and Draymond Green into more minutes at the 5.
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