The Warriors change their rotation and barely beat the Sacramento Kings at home
Steph Curry is transcendent while the Warriors' bench is anything but, Klay Thompson struggles, and Steve Kerr turns to unexpected players to chase a win.
After an unnervingly tense period of crunch time, the Warriors beat the Sacramento Kings 116-113 for their fourth win of the season. This victory was the Warriors’ first in five nights after a winless road trip against mostly bad Eastern Conference teams. The Warriors’ embarrassing road trip necessitated changes and after a humiliating loss to the Orlando Magic, who came into their game with the Warriors with a 1-7 record, Steve Kerr vowed to make dramatic changes to his rotation.
The Warriors’ load management loss against the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night hinted at some changes — Anthony Lamb started that night and Jonathan Kuminga played more than twice as much as James Wiseman. Tonight, Lamb and Kuminga were the next subs of the night after Jordan Poole came in. The Warriors’ other two-way player, Ty Jerome, was the Warriors’ fourth sub of the night. Let that sink in — with the Warriors in desperate need of a win, Steve Kerr trusted two players that the team acquired in the middle of training camp, more than he did Wiseman, JaMychal Green, or, for that matter, Moses Moody, who didn’t play his first minutes of the game until the second quarter.
I don’t really understand why Moody got so little playing time or took so long to get in the game. Through the Warriors’ first 10 games of the season, he was one of the team’s most malleable players — Moody sported positive net ratings alongside the Warriors’ starters and he’d played pretty decently alongside Jordan Poole and the rest of the Warriors’ flailing bench.
Speaking of the bench — the Warriors got just 13 points from the bench tonight. Jonathan Kuminga had a nice dunk in semi-transition during his first-quarter minutes but did not play in the second half. On a related note, Kuminga took and missed two three-pointers and did not rack up any other counting stats tonight. Only hours after I sang the praises of Ty Jerome for his hyper-efficiency in a small sample size, he missed his only two shots of the night and tallied a -22 in 11 minutes.
The Warriors’ best bench player tonight was probably Anthony Lamb. During his scoring outburst against the New Orleans Pelicans, I marveled at how Lamb’s clumsy shot form and herky-jerky dribbling led to good results. Tonight, Lamb’s shooting and dribbling recalled the cross-faded FedEx drivers I used to hoop with on the basketball court below my old Brooklyn apartment. But because Lamb competes hard on defense, cuts to the hoop, and commits himself to setting good screens and playing off of Steph Curry, he earned second-half minutes and was trusted to play alongside the starters during the fourth quarter. Make of that what you will. I don’t think Anthony Lamb is all that and I have my moral misgivings about the Warriors employing him, but he’s been useful to the Warriors by virtue of knowing his role and making the most of every second he’s on the court.
Did you notice what bench player I haven’t talked about yet? Jordan Poole played just 21 minutes and only took four shots and committed three turnovers. Poole’s turnovers were not of his typical, over-dribbling genre. Instead, he threw the ball away trying to make risky passes because he was passing up shots in the paint. The whole thing was really confusing and Poole looked rather annoyed for most of the game and especially when the camera turned to him on the bench. I don’t know what to make of Poole’s struggles. I noted in my post earlier this morning that Poole’s finishing has been severely impacted by James Wiseman’s presence, but Wiseman sat tonight and he played sparing minutes alongside the big man in non-Steph minutes during the Warriors’ road trip. These problems clearly go beyond just an inconsistent supporting cast on the bench and it’s really disorienting to see Poole recede rather than try and shoot his way out of his struggles.
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