The logic of Steve Kerr's coaching decisions, pt. 2: Kelly Oubre's role
The politics of benching Kelly Oubre, Oubre's numbers after his early season slump, and Oubre's impact in his new bench role.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wrote this on April 27, before the Warriors’ disaster of a game against the Dallas Mavericks the next night.
Kelly Oubre’s role
I’m writing this section only hours before the Warriors face off with the Dallas Mavericks and at this point we only have a four game sample size of what Kelly Oubre looks like off of the bench. I’m going to get to that later, as well as Oubre’s games earlier in the season without Wiseman. I might even look at Oubre’s lineup numbers to see how much time he’s spent in lineups without two shooters. But the early returns are encouraging! In 4 games off of the bench, Oubre is averaging 18.8 points a game, 6 boards, an assist, and 1.8 stocks on 48/32/75 splits and has combined with Jordan Poole to give the Warriors a rather potent bench scoring unit.
When Oubre opened the season on an extended slump reminiscent of 2016 Finals Harrison Barnes, many Warriors fans, myself included, called for Oubre to get benched in favor of Damion Lee or Kent Bazemore. That of course, did not happen and Oubre eventually regressed to the mean. After a breakout game against the Mavericks where he went for 40 points on 7/10 from three, Oubre has been shooting 36.8% from the three point line — a totally acceptable percentage on a relatively high volume of nearly 6 three point attempts per 36 minutes. But his three point percentage on the year, 31.6%, is clearly dragged down by that brutal early season slump.
Oubre’s shooting after his slump breaking game in Dallas is solid, but this isn’t to say that Oubre has actually been good for the Warriors this year. As I mentioned in my Wiseman post, Oubre is still one of three players in the Kerr era to get more than 100 minutes with Steph in a two-man combo and have a negative net rating. Again, there are some caveats here that frankly, could apply to almost everybody on the roster — namely that Oubre had to play a lot of minutes next to Paschall (-20.8 net rating in 281 minutes) and Wiseman (-10.8 net rating in 527 minutes) — and in lineups with poor spacing.
Applying the same exercise we did with Wiseman’s 5 man lineups, here are the lineups that Oubre spent >5 minutes with that have two or more shooters (Oubre has played 1664 minutes on the year (I’ve bolded the positive ones):
36 minutes of Steph/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a -29.7 net rating
31 minutes of Mannion/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Looney with a +3.3 net rating
24 minutes of Wanamaker/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Paschall with a +3.7 net rating
24 minutes of Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney with a -22.2 net rating
22 minutes of Steph/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre Looney with a -5.7 net rating
19 minutes of Steph/Mulder/Oubre/JTA/Green with a +16.7 net rating
16 minutes of Wanamaker/Mulder/Lee/Oubre/Paschall with a -52.8 net rating
16 minutes of Steph/Poole/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a +7.0 net rating
15 minute of Steph/Mulder/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a -14.7 net rating
13 minutes of Steph/Mulder/Wiggins/Oubre/JTA with a +25.4 net rating
12 minutes of Steph/Lee/Oubre/Green/Wiseman with a -18.1 net rating
11 minutes of Steph/Poole/Oubre/JTA/Green with a +17.9 net rating
9 minutes of Steph/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/JTA with a -59.5 net rating
9 minutes of Steph/Mulder/Oubre/Paschall/Looney with a -22.7 net rating
8 minutes of Mannion/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Green with a +21.1 net rating
8 minutes of Steph/Lee/Oubre/Paschall/Greehn with a +11.8 net rating
8 minutes of Steph/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Pchall with a -66.9 net rating
7 minutes of Poole/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Looney with a -49 net rating
7 minutes of Poole/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a -44.3 net rating
7 minutes of Steph/Lee/Oubre/Green/Looney with a +71.7 net rating
6 minutes of Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Wiseman with a +13.3 net rating
6 minutes of Steph/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Green with a +2.4 net rating
6 minutes of Steph/Mulder/Lee/Oubre/Green with a -3.3 net rating
6 minutes of Steph/Lee/Oubre/JTA/Wiseman with a +26.7 net rating
6 minutes of Steph/Poole/Oubre/JTA/Looney with a +47.6 net rating
Again, I didn’t look at lineups to receive 5 minutes or less, so my math here is an approximation, but in total, Oubre has played roughly 18.4% of his minutes in lineups with two or more shooters. Here I will confess that my arbitrary designation of Steph, Poole, Lee, and Mulder as the “shooters,” feels slightly dishonest and I started to feel that even more as I looked at how many times I excluded Bazemore from these estimates. I mention this because on the whole, lineups with Oubre and Bazemore WITHOUT Wiggins perform quite well, as do lineups where Oubre is next to Draymond and Juan at the same time. Here are the lineups Oubre has played in to receive over 20 minutes (lineups with a positive net rating are bolded):
247 minutes of Steph/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Wiseman with a -12.8 net rating
186 minutes of Steph/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Looney with a +9.9 net rating
145 minutes of Steph/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Green with a +11.2 net rating
44 minutes of Steph/Bazemore/Oubre/Green/Wiseman with a +27.8 net rating
39 minutes of Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Paschall with a -19.4 net rating
38 minutes of Steph/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Wiseman with a -6.7 net rating
36 minutes of Steph/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a -29.7 net rating
33 minutes of Poole/Wiggins/Oubre/Green/Wiseman with a -22.1 net rating
31 minutes of Mannion/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Looney with a +3.3 net rating
28 minutes of Wanamaker/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Paschall with a +2.1 net rating
27 minutes of Steph/Bazemore/Oubre/Green/Looney with a +20.4 net rating
26 minutes of Steph/Bazemore/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a +9.6 net rating
25 minutes of Steph/Bazemore/Oubre/JTA/Green with a +23.2 net rating
24 minutes of Poole/Wiggins/Oubre/JTA/Wiseman with a -43.1 net rating
24 minutes of Wanamaker/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/JTA with a +10 net rating
24 minutes of Wanamaker/Poole/Lee/Oubre/Paschall with a +3.7 net rating
24 minutes of Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney with a -22.2 net rating
24 minutes of Steph/Oubre/Wiggins/Paschall/Wiseman with a -26 net rating
22 minutes of Steph/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney with a -5.7 net rating
I’ll concede that there’s might be amount of noise here for lineups to receive less than 4o minutes, but I think these numbers are still illuminating. What sticks out to me is that the negative lineups with Oubre typically include some combination of Wiseman, Paschall, or Wiggins. The few solidly good lineups with Oubre and Wiggins mostly include either Juan, Steph, or Bazemore. All of this is to say that the lineup data shows a fair amount of overlap between Wiggins and Oubre and the moment you play one of Wiseman or Paschall next to Oubre, you’re pretty much fucked.
Of course, now that Wiseman is out with a meniscus tear and Eric Paschall started getting DNP’s (his first one occurred during the Chicago game on March 29th that we’ll refer to from now on as the beginning of the Win Chasing Era), Steve Kerr has mostly made sensible lineup decisions. Sure, it took him a few more games to mercifully terminate the Nico Mannion experiment, but that Chicago game marked a shift to more frequent PNR’s and more lineups with Kelly Oubre at the 4. Here are the 5-man lineups with Oubre to have received more than 10 minutes in the Win Chasing Era (positive net ratings are bolded):
68 minutes of Steph/Wiggins/Oubre/Green/Wiseman with a -5.2 net rating
24 minutes of Poole/Lee/Bazemore/Oubre/Looney with a -22.2 net rating
18 minutes of Steph/Lee/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a +4.9 net rating
18 minutes of Steph/Oubre/Wiggins/JTA/Green with a +43.7 net rating (!)
15 minutes of Steph/Bazemore/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a +18.5 net rating
13 minutes of Steph/Oubre/Wiggins/Green/Looney with a +33.8 net rating
12 minutes of Poole/Bazemore/Wiggins/Oubre/Looney with a +53.2 net rating
11 minutes of Steph/Poole/Wiggins/Oubre/Green with a -11.5 net rating
11 minutes of Steph/Poole/Oubre/JTA/Green with a +17.9 net rating
You’ll notice that most of these lineups are performing pretty well, albeit in a small sample size. Of course, the absence of Wiseman and Paschall do not make me trust Kelly Oubre to make good decisions, but I think that Kerr’s hand being forced has proven a thesis that many Warriors fans believed — Kelly Oubre would be best suited to a bench role. Simply put, Wiggins, Oubre, and Bazemore’s skill sets overlap quite a bit with one another and although there is positive data from them sharing the floor in recent games, that’s obviously been buoyed by a soft schedule, a small sample size, and a small ball environment around Steph/Dray that I think most average NBA wings could take advantage of.
Here, I will give Steve Kerr some leeway; given the financial costs of acquiring Kelly Oubre — over $80 million luxury tax bills — I can understand why Kerr may have felt he had no choice but to start Oubre. Factor in also Oubre’s post trade deadline comments about a possible bench role next year — “I can offer a lot more than coming off the bench,” — and one gets the sense that there may have been tension in the locker room had Oubre been benched earlier in the season. Several times on the Light Year’s Discord I joked that the Warriors might benefit from Oubre missing a few games from health and safety protocols (assuming asymptomatic contagion or contact tracing of course because I wouldn’t wish bad health on Oubre) and a chance for the Warriors to see how they’d look without Oubre AND Wiseman. Oubre of course, sprained his wrist, the Warriors went 4-1 in his absence and Kerr took this opportunity to ease Oubre into a bench role, which he seems to have willingly accepted. It’s frustrating this didn’t happen earlier, but I do think there’s a moderately convincing argument to be made that this sequence of events provided the smoothest emotional path to Oubre accepting a bench role.
What does it all mean for Oubre’s future with the Warriors? I’m not really sure quite yet. In the near term, I fully expect this team to play better, but this doesn’t mean that I think the Warriors need Kelly Oubre back next year, especially not if Juan Toscano Anderson keeps playing the way he does. Oubre’s market could go as high as $20 million dollars and frankly, I’m not sure he’s worth more than $15 million unless you can guarantee he spends most of his time at the 4 and in lineups with good spacing. It’s certainly possible that good spacing is easier to come by if Klay Thompson plays 60% of his games next year and Justian Jessup is someone Steve Kerr trusts to play real minutes, but Oubre’s inconsistency and low IQ scare me. As we rear up for a likely playoff run, I live in fear of a cold Steph night during a play-in game coupled with a mediocre game from Oubre and/or Wiggins, which would not at all be surprising considering how much better scouted the Warriors offense will be.