The JV Warriors roll over for the New Orleans Pelicans and fall back two games below a .500 record
The Warriors lose the game in the first half, the kiddos play, Jonathan Kuminga gets into his bag with poor results, and much more.
In April of 2021, the Warriors lost to the Toronto Raptors by 53 points in a game that Steph Curry and the vets sat. In that game, which was a horror show of bad basketball and inexperience, the Raptors came damn near building a 70-point lead. It was so bad that Mike Mekus, respectfully horny Warriors’ Twitter legend, managed to crowdfund a refund for the tickets he got to this game because it was the first Warriors’ game he’d ever gone to in his life.
Less than ten days after that humiliating loss, James Wiseman got hurt, and the Warriors went on a 15-5 run in his absence. If Wiseman hadn’t gotten hurt, the Warriors would not have gone on their season-ending tear and rediscovered their identity as a team. Paradoxically, that injury tore the bandage off and through subtraction, the Warriors became something resembling themselves again.
Tonight’s game against the Pelicans never got as ugly as that Toronto game, but I’d hazard a guess that less than 20% of the Warriors’ viewers sat through the entire game. Those that did are either deranged sickos, or people like me, who enjoy writing about the Warriors.
When the Warriors announced that Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Andrew Wiggins would sit out tonight’s game, a loss was all but assured. The JV Warriors did play the Pelicans close a few weeks ago in nearly identical circumstances, but just a few minutes into tonight’s game, it was clear that this game would end in a blowout. The Warriors fell behind as many as 18 points in the first quarter and committed 7 turnovers in the period, including four in as many minutes to start the game.
Steve Kerr, perhaps wishing to induce garbage time earlier than usual, did not play Donte DiVincenzo for more than 10 minutes between when he subbed out at the 4:27 mark of the first period — the Warriors trailed 7-22 at that point, by the way — until he came back in at the 3:39 mark of the second quarter with the Warriors trailing by 21 points.
There were three separate instances during the second quarter where the Warriors got within 15 points of the Pelicans. But in all three instances, the Pelicans almost instantly got their lead back up to 20 or more points. After the third short-lived run, I started to yearn for a bigger loss, the bigger the better. That might sound sacrilegious to some people — why would a lifelong Warriors’ fan root for a loss? — but tonight I wanted to see the gap between the Warriors’ veterans and the Warriors’ youthful core grow into a gaping canyon, barring a miraculous and simultaneous leap from all of the Warriors’ relevant young players.
Make no mistake, so long as Steph Curry is healthy, I want the Warriors to win every game that he plays. But a humiliating loss in a game like tonight without Curry that further illuminates the gap between the Warriors’ youth and veterans? I can live with that.
The Warriors’ Two Timeline plan is a joke. It’s a joke because the Warriors have committed two severe party fouls: they drafted poorly and did not provide their young players with enough veteran insulation to survive their mistakes. That is why Steve Kerr trusts Anthony Lamb and Ty Jerome to play more minutes than the Warriors’ lottery picks and that’s how you end up with a situation where the two aforementioned two-way contract players come into the game before Moses Moody. Oh, and James Wiseman is in the G-League right now and had a plus/minus of -7 in a 16-point victory. Every single one of Wiseman’s teammates had a positive plus/minus, by the way, and the Santa Cruz Warriors closed with former training camp invitee, Trevion Williams at the 5, over him. I digress.
The quickest way for the Two Timeline plan to come to its merciful end, barring an unlikely leap from players who Steve Kerr does not trust and thusly will not get the reps they need to grow past their mistakes, is for the Warriors to make a trade. With each humiliating instance of the Warriors’ young guys blowing a lead or looking like a G-League team against NBA-level competition, the odds of a trade increase. To be clear, I don’t want to trade all of the Warriors’ young guys away, I just want a few capable veterans — what I’d do for Kelly Olynyk to run dribble handoffs with Jordan Poole and dish it to Jonathan Kuminga cutting to the hoop.
To be clear, the Warriors’ Two Timeline plan didn’t work last season, but it was, at least, tolerable because the Warriors had a handful of veteran bench players around to play when the kids weren’t ready or to help guide the kids in their shared minutes. This season, a game without Steph Curry and the vets features Kevon Looney as the most veteran Warrior and JaMcyhal Green and Donte DiVincenzo as the next longest-tenured NBA players.
Last season, a load management game would have featured at least Damion Lee, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Gary Payton II, and Nemanja Bjelica, all of whom provided utility to the Warriors’ young guys. This season, the now second-year players who were useful last year in small doses — Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody — are among the more senior young guys on the team. They have seniority, relatively speaking, which is how you end up with Jonathan Kuminga taking 20 shots in 39 minutes, including 12 threes. Oh, and by the way, Kuminga actually shot better on three — 4/12 from deep — than he did on two-point shots, which he finished at a 2/8 clip.
Jordan Poole scored 26 points tonight and JaMychal Green and Moses Moody also scored 10 points each. No other Warrior cleared double digits and moments like these validated Steve Kerr’s reluctance to give more meaningful minutes to his young players:
Some notes:
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