The 2021-22 Golden State Warriors season-in-review: Gary Payton II
Gary Payton II's incredible and ascension to the Warriors' rotation, a Moreyball shot chart for the ages, and examining the various paths the Warriors could have taken to keep GPII
Gary Payton II: A
After six years of bouncing around the G-League and never truly catching on with an NBA team, Gary Payton II came into the Warriors’ training camp with a backup plan; if he didn’t make the roster, he’d apply for the team’s video coordinator position.
In the spring of the 2020-21 season, GPII signed a pair of 10-day contracts with the Warriors before finally receiving a spot on the 15-man roster in May. Payton II really only played meaningful minutes once that season during a close loss on the road to the Boston Celtics. The Warriors’ defense during that stint was excellent but GPII only took one shot in those minutes, which you can see below:
Check out the lineup on the floor during that sequence: Curry/GPII/Wiggins/JTA/Green. That’s not a lot of spacing. The previous lineup — Curry/GPII/Wiggins/Looney/Green — has even less shooting. During the most important minutes of the season, Gary Payton II sat on the bench while Kent Bazemore and Mychal Mulder played over him. That Warriors team probably didn’t have the requisite floor spacing to truly take advantage of Payton II’s unique gifts as a cutter and vertical threat, so rode the bench as an infrequently-used defensive specialist.
But Payton II was stubborn in his belief that he could help the Warriors and make their roster in the fall of 2021 so he played and dominated the Las Vegas Summer League and provided highlights like this one:
In the summer of 2021, The Athletic’s Anthony Slater noted in a podcast that GPII had never participated in training camp with an NBA team. GPII was reportedly adamant in his belief that he would finally make an NBA roster if he only got that chance to show a team what he could do during training camp.
Gary Payton II was there in training camp for the Warriors, but he didn’t get much of a chance to prove himself because he had to heal from a surgically repaired sports hernia. During GPII’s absence, former Boston Celtics guard, Avery Bradley, had the inside track on the Warriors’ 15th roster spot. Players like Andre Iguodala sang Bradley’s praises and took it as a given that the veteran guard would make the Warriors’ roster.
But in the Warriors’ penultimate preseason game, Payton II, finally healthy, got a chance to prove himself. In 12 minutes, GPII racked up three dunks and demonstrated an intuitive understanding of how to operate as a cutter in the Warriors’ motion offense. Payton II was so impressive that he all but won the roster spot that night.
This was, reportedly, the desired outcome of the Warriors’ front office, who were resisting pressure from the Warriors’ veterans to add Bradley to the roster. From The Athletic:
At one point during Payton’s stint, Steph Curry stood up from his seat on the bench, turned towards the crowd and locked eyes with Bob Myers, the president of basketball operations, seated about five rows back, next to a beaming Joe Lacob.
“Steph turned and gave me an, ‘All right, all right … ‘” Myers said while sharing the story this week, his head nodding and shoulders shrugged, hands in the air, mimicking Curry’s gesture. “I gave him one of those looks, like: ‘See, we’re not idiots. We know a little bit.'”
But Payton II’s preseason debut wasn’t enough to save him from financial considerations. The Warriors cut GPII, Bradley, Jordan Bell, and Mychal Mulder at the end of training camp, despite wanting to keep Payton II on the roster. The Warriors’ hope was that GPII would clear waivers, at which point they’d bring him back and save themselves several million dollars in luxury tax payments by not having him on their opening-night roster, which would trigger a partial guarantee as mandated by language in his contract. Twenty-nine other NBA teams had a chance to claim Gary Payton II off of waivers but none of them bit, which allowed the Warriors to bring him back three days later.
Payton II only played at the end of quarters in the first two games of the season, but in the third game of the season, Andre Iguodala sat and GPII got his first taste of rotation minutes. In 17 minutes, Payton scored 10 points and hit two threes. In the Warriors’ next game, he hit another three, which was a notable development for a player whose shooting was frequently cited as his biggest weakness. GPII got spot minutes over the next three games and then staked a permanent claim to the rotation with an explosive 14-point performance and defensive domination of the Charlotte Hornets’ backcourt. Here are a few clips:
In a post-game press conference, Steve Kerr announced that Payton II had earned more playing time and would no longer be a match-up-dependent player. From that night on, Gary Payton II played double-digit minutes in all but 6 games. Save for a few injury-related absences, GPII was one of the Warriors’ most reliable contributors and his unique skill set allowed the Warriors to do some incredibly goofy stuff on both offense and defense.
Gary Payton II’s perimeter defense was spectacular, but he was also able to defend up several positions and on occasion, operate as a fearsome interior defender despite standing only 6’3. In this clip below that I cut up, you can see GPII do a bit of everything: on the first possession, he makes an impressive contest of a jump shot by 6’9 forward, Brandon Ingram; there are several clips of him fronting and/or defending Nikola Jokic in the post and on one instance, blocking his shot; you can see Payton II toggle between perimeter defense and rim protection all in one possession against Norman Powell; you’ll see him force Donovan Mitchell to pass the ball to a cutting Bogdan Bogdavonic down the baseline and then pin Bogie’s layup against the backboard.
You won’t find many guys in the NBA who can defend like that and especially not at 6’3. Payton’s athleticism let him hang out amongst the trees on offense as well. Per The Ringer’s Seerat Sohi, the Warriors’ coaching staff had envisioned GPII as a quasi-Bruce Brown player on offense, a perimeter-sized interior player who could let the Warriors invert their offensive sets. Payton II frequented the dunker spot and became just competent enough on corner threes to be able to use the corner as a runway for explosive baseline cuts. GPII’s intuitive sense of cutting and off-ball movement turned him into one of the Warriors’ most reliable interior scorers. This clip below highlights his ability to finish on the pick-and-roll and cut into interior buckets:
Over the course of the regular season, Gary Payton II started 16 games for the Warriors. This was a remarkable ascension for a man who had to fight for his roster spot back in October. When Jordan Poole returned from the NBA’s health and safety protocols a little more than a week before Klay Thompson’s much-anticipated return from Achilles rehab, Gary Payton II started at the shooting guard while Poole acclimated to his new sixth-man role. Later in the season when Draymond Green missed more than two months with a disc injury, GPII started several games in late February as the Warriors tried to recapture their defensive juice.
Gary Payton II’s ability to defend multiple positions and score in the interior allowed Steve Kerr to lean on three-guard lineups and push Andrew Wiggins up to the 4 and on occasion, GPII would close games for the Warriors. In the Warriors’ first round of the playoffs against the Denver Nuggets, Payton was phenomenal in a bench role. In 16.9 minutes a game, GPII averaged 6.8 points and a combined 1.8 steals and blocks (stocks) and showed a penchant for clutch shotmaking. Payton went 6/9 from deep in that series and played an essential role in the game 5 closeout of the Nuggets as the Warriors had GPII set screens for Steph Curry and operate in the dunker spot in crunch time. Here are some clips from that fourth quarter:
The Warriors’ small-ball unit of Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green got a lot of media hype during the first games of the playoffs, but after an explosive start on offense, their defensive and size shortcomings became more and more evident with each game, to the point of getting crushed in game 5 when they started the game. This prompted speculation about who Steve Kerr would start in the Western Conference Semifinals against the Memphis Grizzlies. The answer? Gary Payton II.
In 23 minutes, GPII went 4/5 from the field and racked up 7 rebounds —4 of them on the offensive glass — as well as 3 assists, a steal, and a block. Payton II did this while hounding Ja Morant on the perimeter and then dragging the Grizzlies’ star into vulnerable positions on the other end of the court:
You probably remember what happened next. Gary Payton II scored the first Warrior points of Game 2 on free throws after Grizzlies guard, Dillon Brooks, clubbed him in mid-air. Payton II broke his elbow on the landing, shot free throws, and then came out of the game. The Warriors lost game 2 in crunch time as Ja Morant torched any and all of his defenders to the tune of 47 points. Payton II missed the rest of the series against the Grizzlies, but the Warriors pulled off a 6-game victory in his absence, one that was likely more manageable because of the mid-series injury to Morant that caused him to miss the final three games of the series.
In the Western Conference Finals, the Warriors faced off against the Dallas Mavericks and did not have Payton for the entirety of that series. Andrew Wiggins was the Warriors’ primary defender of Luka Doncic and performed admirably — although Doncic scored 32 points a game, his 41/34/77 shooting splits came in below his career-playoff percentages by 6 FG% and 2.5% points.
By the time of the Finals, GPII had been cleared to return from injury, a remarkable recovery that took less than a month. But in the first game of the Finals against the Celtics, GPII got a DNP and Andre Iguodala got his first minutes since the first round of the playoffs. The Warriors lost that game in a historic barrage of fourth-quarter threes by the Celtics, one that felt like Payton might have helped prevent. In the next game, GPII made his return and played over 25 minutes, the fifth-most on the team. After getting fouled on and missing a transition layup — an ominous moment to my doomer-pilled mind — Payton II hit a corner three that lit the crowd up at the Chase Center:
Payton went on to play nearly 20 minutes a game in the Finals and was a key part of the defense that held the Celtics to terrible two-point field goal efficiency. Here are a few clips:
Gary Payton II was treated to a hero’s return during the Warriors’ championship parade in San Francisco.
Few role players in Warriors’ history were as beloved as GPII. Off the court, he won the Warriors’ inaugural Bob Lanier Community Assist Award for his advocacy work on childhood dyslexia and the foundation of the GPII foundation. Payton II, who had to adapt to his own childhood dyslexia, became a vocal advocate within the dyslexic community and volunteered to do hospital visits for sick children. On the court, Gary Payton II created a symbiotic relationship with the crowd at Chase Center who roared for his explosive dunks, his confident threes from the corner, and the humiliations he doled out to offensive players as he poked balls away, ripped them out of the hands of drivers, and blocked the shots of bigger players.
Gary Payton II talked openly about his desire to be a Warrior life. He is, after all, the son of Bay Area legend, Gary Payton Sr. and spent much of his childhood in the Bay Area. The connection between Gary Payton II and Warriors fans was a natural one and one that seemed like it would last for several years.
But at the start of free agency, Gary Payton II received an offer from the Portland Trail Blazers that was apparently too rich for the Warriors’ liking. Per The Athletic’s Sam Amick, the Warriors offered GPII the taxpayer MLE (approximately $6.4 million annually) on a two-year contract, but the Portland Trail Blazers beat that offer with a 3 year/$28 million offer, nearly double the money for an extra year. After GPII got that offer from the Blazers, Steph Curry and Draymond Green were reportedly sent to try and convince GPII to stay, but were unable to do so.
To be clear, that is not the fault of Curry or Green. Gary Payton II had never had a guaranteed contract prior to his Warriors’ stint and his career earnings were meager — GPII had every right to choose financial security, especially after getting a glimpse of his own basketball mortality after Dillon Brooks broke his elbow. The Warriors’ unwillingness to give Payton II a competitive offer had everything to do with punitive luxury tax payments — per most estimates, paying GPII a contract on par with the one he received from the Blazers would cost the Warriors approximately $65 million dollars in penalties — not his basketball ability.
The Warriors ended up signing Donte DiVincenzo to a 2-year/$9.3 million contract in an attempt to partially replace Gary Payton II’s backup guard/wing minutes. The luxury tax penalties on DDV’s contract come out to a little more than $30 million this next season, a high number, but one that was more palatable to Warriors’ ownership. The Athletic’s Anthony Slater reported that some within the Warriors’ organization were stung by the financially-motivated decision to let Payton II go.
The loss of Gary Payton II will hurt the Warriors. In just one season with the Warriors, GPII established himself as a premier defensive player in the NBA. But what made Payton II special for these Warriors was his ability to moonlight as a power-wing who feasted on a diet of cuts and lobs set up by Steph Curry’s spacing and constant movement. Gary Payton II was a much-needed source of easy interior buckets on a team that lacked proven athletes and vertical threats and he gave the Warriors huge minutes in the playoffs.
Generally speaking, most teams that win championships bring back their proven role players, but the Warriors’ management made a choice to prioritize minutes for their young players when they let go of Gary Payton II. Make no mistake, the Warriors could have paid Gary Payton II if they’d wanted to. Those luxury tax payments don’t actually happen until your roster is set at the end of the season — there was a world where the Warriors could have paid GPII and then dumped salary if need be later in the season. Optionality, as Warriors’ GM Bob Myers has frequently said, is a valuable thing.
On Twitter, friend of the Substack, @fakelogic, ran some numbers on how the Warriors might have been able to keep Gary Payton II:
It’s also worth noting that the Warriors’ decision to use the 28th overall draft pick on Patrick Baldwin Jr. would cost $2.2 million in salary this year and additional luxury tax penalties. Fakelogic notes also that Baldwin Jr.’s rookie-scale contract is worth about 400k more than a veteran minimum contract before tax considerations. This is all to say, the Warriors didn’t explicitly choose Patrick Baldwin Jr. instead of Gary Payton II, but that trading that pick away would have made it easier for the Warriors to carve out a financial path for GPII’s return.
In the short term, the Warriors' choice to allow Payton II to sign with the Portland Trail Blazers and fill his minutes with a combination of Donte DiVincenzo, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kuminga is likely to hurt the Warriors. While DiVincenzo will provide more ballhandling than GPII and Moody a shooting upgrade, the Warriors will be weaker on the interior without Payton. Jonathan Kuminga may be an athletic upgrade on GPII, but his cutting is not yet up to that same standard, to say nothing of the unproven James Wiseman.
In order to mitigate the loss of Gary Payton II, the Warriors will need their young bench players to make big leaps. In the long-term, this gamble might pay out, but for the next season, it’s hard to see how the Warriors are in a better position without Gary Payton II, a player who should have retired with his hometown team, the Golden State Warriors.
Gary Payton II’s statistical profile (career bests bolded):
71 games played, 17.6 minutes a game, 7.1 points a game, 3.5 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.6 turnovers, 1.4 steals, 0.5 blocks, and 1.8 fouls per game.
61.6% FG, 35.8 3P%, 60.3% FT, 67.9 TS% (+11.3% league average TS), 67.9% EFG (+14.7 league average EFG).
4.8 FGA, 1.7 3PA, 0.8 FTA.
BBREF: 129 ORTG, 103 DRTG, +5.9 +/- on/off per 100 poss., 1.8 VORP, 1.99 WS/48, 14.3% USG.
NBA.com: 110.6 ORTG, 102.3 DRTG, +8.3 net rating, 14.0% USG.
+3.4 DIFF in non-garbage time (71st percentile), 7th percentile usage, 99th percentile PSA, 9th percentile AST%, 17th percentile AST:Usg, 53rd percentile TOV% among combo guards.
+1.15 ORPM, -0.29 DRPM, +0.86 RPM (#122 rank of 557 players).
For most of his flailing career in the NBA, Gary Payton II was asked to operate as a point guard. While lack of a reliable shot and self-creation ability limited his effectiveness as a backup point guard, the Warriors didn’t even make an attempt to make a creator out of him and instead turned him into a play-finisher extraordinaire.
Per Cleaning the Glass, GPII was good for a staggering 1.34 points-per-possession on shot attempts, which ranked in the 99th percentile amongst combo guards. Payton made the most of his shots on a relatively meager diet and his non-garbage time USG% of 12.5 ranked in the 7th percentile. Take a look at GPII’s numbers in his previous seasons — in tiny sample sizes, he had an AST% of 20.8%, 11.1%, 14.1%, and 15.1% in stints where he played more than 50 minutes. But on this Warriors’ team, his AST% dropped to 7.5% because he was rarely asked to create for others.
Basketball Reference’s BPM ranked GPII #44 overall in the league and has him as a positive on both sides of the court. ESPN, for some reason, thought Payton II was a minus on defense. EPM on the other hand ranked Payton II as the second-most impactful defensive player in basketball behind only Draymond Green. Sigh.
Relative to his peers at the “combo guard”, Gary Payton II was an outlier. GPII ranked in the 91st percentile in BLK%, the 100th percentile in STL%, the 98th percentile in offensive rebounding percentage off of missed field goals and the 98th percentile of OREB’s on free throws. The BBall Index’s impact and tracking numbers also rank GPII among the league elite on defense:
Gary Payton II’s playoff performance:
6.8 points, 2.8 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 1.0 steals, and 0.8 blocks a game in 16.9 minutes a game on 71/75/67 shooting splits in 5 games against the Denver Nuggets
4.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 0.5 steals, and 0.5 blocks a game in 13.0 minutes a game on 80/0/50 shooting splits in 2 games against the Memphis Grizzlies.
7.0 points, 3.2 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 1.6 steals, and 0.4 blocks a game in 18.5 minutes a game on 59/29/70 shooting splits in 5 games against the Boston Celtics
Here lineup stats the combos that played over >10 possessions together during Gary Payton II’s playoff run, courtesy of Cleaning the Glass (positive ones highlighted in green):
Gary Payton II ranked as the third-most impactful player on the Warriors per Cleaning the Glass’s net rating differential with a +12.4 DIFF. When Payton II was the on the court, the Warriors were +15.7 during the playoffs and that is in spite of his most-used lineup having a brutal -26.0 net rating. Context matters here: that is the starting line up that opened the series against the Memphis Grizzlies and you might recall the repeated horror show that was first quarters of the Western Conference Semifinals. The Grizzlies shot over 40% from three in first quarters of that series and in each game, without fail, they’d briefly look like the greatest team in NBA history and jump out to a large lead at the expense of the Warriors’ starters.
In the Finals, that same lineup, Curry/GPII/Thompson./Wiggins/Green, had a +12.2 net rating in 15 minutes together. All in all, 10 of the 13 lineups that played three or more minutes with GPII came up positive. In the pivotal game 5 of the Finals, Payton II gave the Warriors 15 points off of the bench and 5 minutes. You can see some of his memorable moments from that game below:
The Warriors closed the Celtics out in Boston with several back-breaking runs. The first of these runs, a 21-0 period of domination from the 3:06 mark of the first quarter through 10-minute mark of the second period, happened with GPII on the court. In 19 minutes, Payton II was a team-high +18 and played excellent defense on the Celtic’s ball-handlers. These victorious moments, which you can see below, were among Payton II’s final ones with the Warriors.
Gary Payton II’s shooting profile:
Restricted area: 80.5% on 174 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 58.3% on 48 attempts.
Mid-range: 50% on 30 attempts.
Left corner 3: 40% on 35 attempts.
Right corner 3: 38.5% on 39 attempts.
Above the break 3: 31.1% on 45 attempts.
Floaters: 25% on 8 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 75.7% on 148 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 30%
Assisted by: Steph Curry (44), Jordan Poole (26), Draymond Green (20), Juan Toscano-Anderson (18), Nemanja Bjelica (16), Andre Iguodala and Kevon Looney (10), Andrew Wiggins and Klay Thompson (8), Damion Lee (6), Otto Porter Jr. (5), Jonathan Kuminga (2), Chris Chiozza and Jeff Dowtin and Moses Moody (1),
FGM% assisted: 83.0%
FGM% unassisted: 17.0%
Gary Payton II’s shot preferences are in total alignment with a Morey-esque mentality about efficiency. With more than 80% of his field goals assisted, Payton II rarely looked to create his own shot and rarely needed to. GPII’s ability to feast on corner threes and baseline cuts allowed the Warriors to invert their offense and let big playmakers hang out at the top of the key. You’ll note that three of the five players who assisted Payton II the most are bigs — Draymond, JTA, and Bjelica. That’s not a coincidence.
Gary Payton II was the Warriors’ third-most frequent cutter and only Kevon Looney registered a higher frequency of cuts in all of their possessions. Payton II’s cuts were good for 1.60 PPP, which ranked in the 96th percentile of all NBA players. The impressive strength and explosive ability of Gary Payton II made him such an efficient finisher on these cuts that he registered a higher field goal percentage in the restricted area than notable players like Robert Williams II, Jarrett Allen, Anthony Davis, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
You’ll note also that Gary Payton II is one of the only players we’ve looked at on this Warriors team that has anything near an equal distribution of three point attempts between the corners and above-the-break shots. Take Damion Lee, for example, who had a nearly-identical share of assisted and unassisted shots as Payton II. Lee took over twice as many threes from above-the-break as he did from the corner. Not a single one of Gary Payton II’s three-point makes this past season were unassisted, but he made the most of the passes he received.
My internet friend, FNQ, works in basketball technology and analytics and last summer a company he worked with tracked Payton II’s shot throughout the duration of summer league. GPII was an ideal player track for this company because they had film of his shooting in previous NBA seasons to compare against his summer league shots. This footage would allow the company to effectively composite an idea of what GPII’s “ideal” shot form would be and track deviations from that form.
One thing that FNQ noticed was that Payton II did not make a single shot in summer league when he looked down at his feet before shooting the ball. But so long as he didn’t look at his feet, Payton II’s shot actually went in at respectable percentages and by the end of summer league, FNQ predicted on RealGM that his three-point shot could improve in the Warriors’ ecosystem.
That’s pretty much exactly what happened. Gary Payton II had never shot better than 30.8% from deep when he was shooting more than a three game. But in this past season, GPII shot just about the league average from three on a diet of very easy threes. Payton II only took one three-point attempt with a defender within 2-4 feet of him. Every other 118 threes that he took registered as an open or wide-open attempt, per NBA.com. These were easy threes that offenses willingly ceded to GPII, but he hit just enough threes to provide value as a corner shooter, one who could also feast on baseline cuts.
Here is Gary Payton II’s shot chart for this past season from Positive Residual:
The lineup stats!
We’ll start with Cleaning the Glass’ non-garbage time lineups.
I’ve highlighted the positive lineups below in green.
Only one of the negative lineups in these top-20 involves Steph Curry, that’s not surprising. What I did not expect, however, was to see Kevon Looney in nearly half of the lineups that GPII played most frequently with. Nemanja Bjelica shows up 7 times in the top-20 and there are only three lineups in this list where Draymond Green plays at the 5. The Poole/GPII/Wiggins/OPJ/Green lineup played the 9th-most minutes of any lineup for the Warriors this past season and it had a +40.8 net rating and defended at a 84.4 DRTG. The only lineup that played more without Steph Curry actually includes only players who will be on the Warriors roster — Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Looney — and had a -34.8 net rating.
Seeing the success of the Poole/GPII/Wiggins/OPJ/Green lineup gave me an idea, so I did a little digging on Gary Payton’s possible impact on Jordan Poole’s lineups when Steph Curry sat. Jordan Poole played 1628 possessions without either of Curry or GPII and the Warriors had a -2.3 net rating. The Poole/GPII combo actually fared pretty well without Steph Curry (+5.0 net rating) but their offensive performance was practically identical at 112.5 ORTG for Poole/GPII and 110.7 ORTG for Poole sans Curry/GPII. What Poole lineups did better with Payton II on the court was defend — without GPII, the Warriors had a 113.0 DRTG in Poole’s minutes without Steph while the 107.5 DRTG of the Poole/GPII combo without Steph ranked in the 87th percentile.
Notable 3-man combos (positive ones bolded):
Poole/GPII/Wiggins: +11.1 net rating (111.2 ORTG) in 378 minutes.
GPII/Wiggins/Looney: +14.1 net rating (114.1 ORTG) in 347 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Wiggins: +13.4 net rating (112.2 ORTG) in 311 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Looney: +20.2 net rating (119 ORTG) in 269 mimnutes.
Curry/GPII/OPJ: +13.2 net rating (113.1 ORTG) in 263 minutes.
GPII/OPJ/Bjelica: +2.3 net rating (103.5 ORTG) in 203 minutes.
GPII/Wiggins/Green: +15.7 net rating (107.7 ORTG) in 202 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Green: +8.9 net rating (105.4 ORTG) in 200 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Bjelica: +22.3 net rating (115.6 ORTG) in 199 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Looney: +12.5 net rating (116 ORTG) in 193 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Bjelica: -1.9 net rating (101.4 ORTG) in 175 minutes.
Poole/GPII/OPJ: +9.7 net rating (104.6 ORTG) in 173 minutes.
GPII/Wiggins/OPJ: +11.0 net rating (106.9 ORTG) in 168 minutes.
GPII/Iguodala/Bjelica: +17.4 net rating (108.2 ORTG) in 149 minutes.
GPII/OPJ/Green: +13.9 net rating (116.1 ORTG) in 147 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Lee: +9.1 net rating (112.4 ORTG) in 144 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Green: +34.3 net rating (121.4 ORTG) in 140 minutes.
GPII/Iguodala/OPJ: -0.4 net rating (101.0 ORTG) in 139 minutes.
Curry/GPII/JTA: +16.8 net rating (110.5 ORTG) in 135 minutes.
GPII/OPJ/Looney: +7.7 net rating (111.9 ORTG) in 125 minutes.
One thing I enjoy about seeing these numbers is that you get a snapshot of the season and whose availability overlapped with whose. Klay Thompson doesn’t show up once in the top-20 of the most frequently used GPII three-man combos, while Andre Iguodala only shows up twice in this list. Do you remember the early weeks of the season when Gary Payton II and Nemanja Bjelica would frequently sub in together to play first-quarter minutes with Steph Curry? That combo had a +22.3 net rating and a 115.6 ORTG). But the GPII/Bjelica combo also played a fair amount alongside Jordan Poole but more than 70% of their minutes together came without Curry on the court, which probably helps explain that combo being one of the only two negative ones on this list.
Notable 2-man combos (positive ones bolded):
GPII/Wiggins: +9.6 net rating (109.6 ORTG) in 654 minutes.
Curry/GPII: +16.9 net rating (115.2 ORTG) in 597 minutes.
Poole/GPII: +8.3 net rating (110.3 ORTG) in 576 minutes.
GPII/OPJ: +6.3 net rating (107.9 ORTG) in 493 minutes.
GPII/Bjelica: +7.4 net rating (106.6 ORTG) in 447 minutes.
GPII/Looney: +13.3 net rating (115.6 ORTG) in 440 minutes.
GPII/Green: +12.0 net rating (110.1 ORTG) in 364 minutes.
GPII/JTA: +7.7 net rating (109 ORTG) in 305 minutes.
GPII/Lee: -1.5 net rating (107 ORTG) in 259 minutes.
GPII/Kuminga: +7.1 net rating (108.5 ORTG) in 227 minutes.
GPII/Iguodala: +8.9 net rating (102.8 ORTG) in 215 minutes.
GPII/Thompson: +2.5 net rating (103.8 ORTG) in 174 minutes.
GPII/Moody: +3.7 net rating (112.1 ORTG) in 114 minutes.
Chiozza/GPII: -35.1 net rating (78.5 ORTG) in 67 minutes.
Only two players rank on this list as negatives alongside Gary Payton II, Damion Lee and Chris Chiozza. But note how Klay Thompson’s is only a little bet better than neutral alongside GPII. Even though Klay only played in 32 games, it’s still surprising to realize that Juan Toscano-Anderson and Damion Lee both played more minutes alongside GPII than Klay did. Sample size and lack of familiarity may have played a role in the eh metrics of GPII/Klay, but that combo actually played more possessions without Steph Curry — 218 — than they did with — 139.
Gary Payton II’s best net rating came alongside Steph Curry and it was the Warriors’ second-best combo per net rating, ranking only behind Curry/Iguodala’s +19.7 net rating in 323 minutes together. Nine different Warriors players were net negatives without Steph Curry on the court — you might be surprised that Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevon Looney were among the negatives — and Gary Payton II was one of them. The difference of his net rating with and without Steph is the fourth-most extreme of any Warrior, but that has more to do with just how good GPII was alongside Steph Curry.
One last combo that I think is worth note: GPII/Wiggins, the combo that played the most minutes together of any of the listed above. Per Cleaning the Glass, GPII/Wiggins without Steph Curry actually played more possessions together this past season than they did with Steph and managed a +5.8 net rating.
Who will replace Gary Payton II in Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins’ minutes without Steph Curry? Who can do while helping those lineups tread water? Donte DiVincenzo is the likely player to get the first bite at the apple, but he cannot replace the vertical threat GPII offered at the guard position. Jonathan Kuminga could approximate Payton’s role in the offense, but he’s a ways away from being anywhere near GPII’s level as a defender.
Kuminga, DiVincenzo, and Moses Moody, are the likely bench players to play the bulk of those non-Steph minutes alongside Jordan Poole. It’s possible that Klay Thompson and Draymond Green spend time in the second unit as well to provide some structure to the motion offense and veteran know-how on defense.
The Warriors will miss the presence of Gary Payton II in the non-Steph minutes in a big way, particularly on defense, but I think his absence will be most evident when Steph Curry is on the court. Gary Payton II was the Warriors’ most effective interior player and their most credible lob threat because of his relentless commitment to cutting into the open space created by the Warriors’ spacing and motion principles. Andrew Wiggins, Kuminga, and James Wiseman all have the requisite leaping ability to put some pressure on the rim, but neither of them have ever demonstrated the intuitive ability that Payton II to find pockets of space to soar from.
By necessity, the Warriors’ lineup combos will change next year and with that, their offensive playcalling will evolve as well. Perhaps the Warriors really do commit to more pick-and-roll in second units in order to simplify the game for James Wiseman. Maybe Jonathan Kuminga will get more reps as the post-up trigger man in the Warriors’ split sets to give the Warriors a back-to-the-basket threat. Elevator door sets and the baseline butterfly cuts of 2015-era Curry/Thompson could return for a Moody/Thompson second-unit wing duo. Who knows.
In any event, the Warriors will almost certainly be worse next season in Gary Payton II’s absence. Warriors’ ownership was guided by financial considerations in theri decision to not offer GPII a contract beyond what they expected his market value to be and as a result, they lost a fan favorite, a hometown hero, and one of basketball’s most unique and athletically impressive defensive players. Gary Payton II should have spent his entire career with the Warriors but instead, he will have to settle for simply being a Warrior legend.
What is next for Gary Payton II?
Gary Payton II will join a surprisingly deep Portland Trail Blazers that made a concentrated effort to improve their perimeter defense after trading CJ McCollum to the New Orleans Pelicans and triggering a re-tooling of their roster. Payton II joins Josh Hart, Justise Winslow, and Jerami Grant as recent Blazers’ acquisitions who can credibly defend multiple positions. Grant figures as the likely starting 4 with two of Hart, Nassir Little, or Anfrenee Simons filling out the rest of the starting lineup. It’s not entirely out of the question that Gary Payton II steals one of the starting spots, but he’s more likely to operate in a bench role similar to what he did for the Warriors.
Damian Lillard and his Trail Blazers have often garnered comparisons to Steph Curry’s Warriors, but that comparison is superficial and indebted to the aesthetics of deep, off-the-dribble threes and not offensive systems. Damian Lillard is a more prolific user of the pick-and-roll than Steph Curry and while the Portland offense doesn’t have the same level of off-ball movement, there should be plenty of space for Gary Payton II to cut into dunks and lobs. Lillard, Jusuf Nurkic, Simons, and Hart are all capable passers at their positions so I expect that Payton II will make his share of highlight dunks in Portland.
By all accounts, the Portland Trail Blazers community is a supportive and dedicated one. As far as I remember, the Moda Center in Portland has always been well-attended and their fans have always rooted hard for their local team, even in difficult teams. Gary Payton II is on a three-year contract with a player option in the final season, but I think he’ll be a good enough basketball fit to carve himself a space in the heart of Portland fans who will be excited to have not only an elite defender, but one of the most thrilling and explosive role players in the NBA.