The Warriors fall to 3-7 after a load-management loss to the New Orleans Pelicans
Solid games from Jonathan Kuminga, Ty Jerome, and Anthony Lamb stand out as rare bright spots in an utterly demoralizing road trip, and more.
Earlier today, the Warriors announced that this game against the New Orleans Pelicans, would be a rest night for Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, and Draymond Green. Tonight’s game was assumed to be not only a likely loss — it was — but an audition for the Warriors’ bench players to see who could stake a claim to rotation minutes. The Warriors are 3-7 now after their 105-114 loss to the Pelicans but tonight’s loss was oddly calming, at least compared to the agonies that were the previous four games of this now-winless road trip.
Tonight’s intrigue centered mostly on the Warriors’ young players. That made it ironic that Steve Kerr decided to close with two-way players, Anthony Lamb and Ty Jerome, during the fourth quarter over Moses Moody or James Wiseman, and that’s to say nothing yet of rookies Patrick Baldwin Jr. and Ryan Rollins. Steve Kerr said after the Warriors’ disastrous loss to the Magic that rotation changes were coming and implied that rotation minutes are now up for grabs for pretty much anybody on the roster. Tonight, Jonathan Kuminga, Anthony Lamb, and Ty Jerome made the strongest claims to continued rotation minutes.
Kuminga played a career-high 38 minutes and scored 18 points on 12 shots. Zion Williamsons’ porous defense padded Kuminga’s point total, but Kuminga looked determined to make a mark on the game, for better and worse. Kuminga attacked the rim with urgency, he had a few nice mid-range shots, he made smart passes out of the post, and he was a very active perimeter defender. Kuminga got very lucky that an ugly dribble move in the fourth quarter was called a foul on his defender and not a travel, and his rebounding still leaves something to be desired for someone of his size and athletic ability, but his ability to convert shots in the paint should be valuable to a Warriors’ team that has gotten very few easy looks at the rim the past few games
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to A Blog for Your Commute to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.