The Warriors get outhustled and pushed around by the Detroit Pistons on the road.
Steph Curry and Jordan Poole keep the Warriors in the game with tough shots, Steve Kerr tries to find a workable bench unit, James Wiseman gets outplayed by Isaiah Stewart, and much more.
The Warriors followed up their frustrating road loss to the Charlotte Hornets last night with an even more demoralizing loss to the Detroit Pistons, who had lost five games in a row prior to tonight. The Pistons scored a season-high 128 points tonight — their previous season-high was just 113 — and had just gotten blown out by the Atlanta Hawks only two nights prior, so it’s not a terrible surprise that they came out to play. What I hope is starting to click for the more inexperienced Warriors is that this is the type of effort they’re going to have to go up against every game — teams get up to play the opposing champs and there will be very off-nights this season.
Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr’s departures I have already lamented at length and I am aware that neither of them has played a single game this season. But tell me you wouldn’t feel some sense of comfort knowing that they were only, say, a week or two from making their season debut — GPII and OPJ were known commodities who could be trusted because of their contributions to a championship-winning roster. Likewise, the Warriors’ Foundational Six, as rough as some of them have been tonight and in previous games — deserve the benefit of the doubt from Warriors’ fans right now.
But the younger players and free-agent acquisitions that make up the Warriors’ bench have not fully earned Steve Kerr’s trust or the benefit of the doubt just yet. Moses Moody was solid last night and tonight, which made it all the more frustrating that he didn’t play his first minutes of the game until the second quarter, but I do understand why Kerr might be reluctant to play 2-3 younger players/new Warriors at the same time if he can avoid it. But the nature of this Warriors’ roster is that Kerr’s hand has been forced by injury and organizational priority — this roster is built for the kids to play and ideally, contribute positively.
If the kids are not contributing, their replacements have significantly lower ceilings than an idealized version of Jonathan Kuminga or what we saw someone like Gary Payton II do alongside Steph Curry last season (+16.9 net rating in the regular season and +16.3 net rating in the playoffs). That’s how you end up with someone like Ty Jerome, the Warriors’ training camp acquisition and two-way contract signee, being one of the first two players off of the bench — Jerome has NBA experience and is willing to buy into the role that’s available for him.
Role acceptance is not something that has come easily for someone like Jonathan Kuminga, who is known to be angry about his minutes' reduction. Kuminga played more within himself tonight but seemed to be overthinking and anxious on the court tonight — he dropped an easy pass that should have been a dunk at the rim and later air-balled a wide-open three — but he did at least look capable of playing within a switch-heavy lineup during the fourth quarter. Kuminga’s run with the starters gave him a chance to play within a system more familiar to him, rather than the PNR-heavy second unit where he was floundering at the 3 earlier this season, but such minutes won’t always be available, not at least until Steve Kerr tinkers further with his rotation and figures out more ways to get minutes for all of James Wiseman, Kuminga, and Moses Moody.
In reality, the story of tonight is not the Warriors’ young kids, but rather the play of their starters. Steph Curry and Jordan Poole each scored over 30 points, but they had to take and make very difficult shots to keep the Warriors in the game as they got meager contributions from the other members of the Foundational Six. Klay Thompson missed tonight’s game (the second night of a back-to-back), Andrew Wiggins had his most ineffective game of the season, Draymond Green was sloppy with the ball on several instances, and Kevon Looney struggled with the physicality of a young Pistons team that was relentless attacking the hoop and offensive glass.
Last season, Steve Kerr had more reliable options to turn on a night where one or several of the starters didn’t bring it. That’s not been the case this season, which is how Anthony Lamb ended up playing fourth-quarter minutes and Moses Moody played nearly the entire final period. Considering the circumstances, Lamb and Moody both played fine, but it’s never ideal when a defending championship team is looking for viable fourth-quarter lineup combos against a team that was 1-5 before tonight.
Some other stray thoughts before we do the quarter-by-quarter rotation watch:
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