The Warriors' week-in-review: 4/26 - 5/2
Looking at how the Warriors played, who played, Kelly Oubre's injury, POOLE WATCH BABY!!!, and a brief preview of the week to come.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: There’s only two weeks left in the regular season, but I’m gonna experiment with a loose formula/structure for these week-in-review posts, so let’s see how it goes.
Who did the Warriors play?
The Dallas Mavericks, Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Houston Rockets.
How did they do?
Ugh. 1-2.
What happened?
A lot, most of it bad. After barely escaping with an undeserved win against the Sacramento Kings last Sunday, the Warriors played arguably their worst game of the season in a 30 point loss. It was an absolute disaster of a game from pretty much start to finish. Hours before tip-off, Damion Lee and Kent Bazemore were placed in health and safety protocols. Not a great omen.
The Warriors then made their first three shots against the Mavericks before rolling over. The game — as well as the Warriors chances of getting the sixth seed and Steph Curry’s late season MVP push — effectively died in a ten minute run where the Mavericks outscored the Warriors 33-4. It got so bad that Juan Toscano Anderson took a late shot clock ISO mid post airball, only the sixth midrange shot of his career.
The game was ugly as sin and I don’t need numbers to quantify that, but this one sticks out: the Warriors had 12 turnovers in the first half and only 8 made shots. In the third quarter, the Warriors looked like an NBA team again. Steph Curry had 15 points on shots and the Warriors put up 35 points on 50/42/88 splits, but it didn’t matter. Luka Doncic had 23 points and the Mavericks went 7-8 from three en route to a 41 point quarter and Steve Kerr pulled the starters and Alen Smailagic got extended fourth quarter run to do god knows what. Final score: 133-103, Dallas.
The Dallas game was a rude reminder that this Warriors team is capable of losing and losing badly to pretty much any team in the league. Having just written upwards of 10,000 words on how I thought the Warriors had a clear path to being very good next year with some minor tweaks around the edges, I felt annoyed they’d made an ass of me. And so after that rude reminder of what this Warriors team is capable of, I did not feel good about the Warriors’ chances against a mildly surging Timberwolves team who’d gone 6-4 in their last ten games.
Before the game, the Warriors put Kelly Oubre Jr. back on the injury report with lingering wrist issues. If Damion Lee weren’t also out, I might have actually been OK about missing Oubre, but I wasn’t exactly excited to see more than 50 combined minutes of Mychal Mulder and Kent Bazmore, who’d cleared his brief contact tracing. The Warriors then came out and laid an egg against the Timberwolves. Save for Andrew Wiggins (18 points on 7/11 FG and 3/3 from three), most of the team looked tired and generally looked like ass. Steph Curry came to life in the third period with 16 points and Kent Bazemore and Draymond Green combined for 15 points and three made threes and took a small lead into the fourth quarter. But none of it mattered because Anthony Edwards had 18 points in the final period and nearly outscored the Warriors on his own. The Timberwolves won, 126 - 114, and the Warriors fucked up their own playoffs chances while also giving the Timberwolves worse lottery odds. Cool, cool.
Subsequent letdowns against the Mavericks and Rockets gave me (reasonable) concern for the Warriors’ road game against the Houston Rockets. In the first half, the Warriors lived up to all of those concerns. Steph Curry shot 2-12 and even missed a free throw in 18 pretty mediocre first half minutes. The Warriors were actually down 55-49 at the half and I was angry at myself for even caring about this stupid sport and having my emotional state tied to pathetic and base nationalist instincts — all pretty and recurring normal feelings I’ve had this season. But thankfully, Steph Curry scored 23 points in the third quarter and put the game away for good. Curry ended the month with an all-time record, 96 threes made, merely 12 more threes than the previous record set by notable chucker, James Harden.
But, during halftime of the Rockets game, the Warriors announced that Kelly Oubre Jr. would be out for the foreseeable future with a torn ligament in his wrist and palm fracture. The Athletic’s Shams Charania said that Oubre would get a few more opinions to see if he could come back at some point this season, but that seems unlikely. I also don’t think it’s particularly encouraging that we found out about the extent of Oubre’s injury after he’s been playing through it.
We really have no clue if the palm facture is a recent thing or was not initially diagnosed. The opaqueness of the situation brings to mind Andrew Bogut playing the first two games of the 2012 season before going back to rehabbing his surgically repaired ankle, Andre Iguodala’s knee contusion that he said was actually a “spider fracture,” the lack of details about Kevin Durant’s calf in the 2019 playoffs, and Marquesse Chriss’ leg soreness that took a day to announce as a broken leg.
It may be nothing and maybe the palm fracture was more recent, but I still don’t think it’s a good look to have this many instances of an injury’s details slowly leaking and with increasing severity. I suspect that’s the type of thing agents and players aren’t wild about either and that should be kept in mind when thinking about how Oubre views the Warriors organization as he goes into free agency this summer.
What lineups played lots of minutes this week?
Since we only have three games of data, I’m just going to look at five man lineups that played more than 5 minutes (excluding some obvious garbage time lineups with Mannion and company) and then five most used three man and two man lineups (positive lineups bolded):
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +21.1 net (117.3 ORTG) in 25 minutes.
Curry/Mulder/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +7.5 net (135 ORTG) in 18 minutes.
Poole/Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA/Looney: -16.2 net (69 ORTG) in 14 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA/Green: -28.6 (100 ORTG) in 9 minutes.
Curry/Mulder/Bazemore/JTA/Green: +51.3 net (127.8 ORTG) in 8 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Mulder/JTA/Green: +0.7 net (94.4 ORTG) in 8 minutes.
Poole/Mulder/Wiggins/JTA/Looney: -22.1 net (131.3 ORTG) in 7 minutes.
What sticks out? Well, it’s worth noting that Bazemore missed the blowout loss against the Mavericks, which seems to have played a role in his lineups not having astronomically bad net ratings. Perhaps that makes it more impressive that Curry/Mulder/Wiggins/Green/Looney still managed a positive net rating, considering they were part of the unit that got pantsed by Luka and the Mavericks. Most of the lineups with Jordan Poole were bad, save for one with Steph that barely manages to tread water while still putting up an ORTG far below league average. Poole has been struggling recently, so it’s not a huge surprise that lineups with him running the show didn’t look great in a small sample size.
Last week’s six (tie for 46 minutes so I’m listing both) most used three man lineups (positive lineups bolded):
Curry/Wiggins/Green: +0.2 net (118 ORTG) in 69 (nice) minutes.
Curry/Mulder/Green: +9.5 net (119 ORTG) in 48 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Looney: +8.1 net (116.2 ORTG) in 46 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Green: +14.1 net (114.1 ORTG) in 46 minutes.
Wiggins/Green/Looney: +11.5 net (119.8 ORTG) in 45 minutes.
Curry/Green/Looney: +17.5 net (123.7 ORTG) in 45 minutes.
I wasn’t expecting the Warriors’ most used three man combos to all have positive net ratings after a week where they lost in embarrassing fashion to the Mavericks and then laid an egg against the Timberwolves. I suppose that the Curry/Wiggins/Green lineup barely grading out as a positive is probably due to those losses, but I’m pleasantly surprised and to see that the championship trio of Curry/Green/Looney are still out here playing at a super high level. You have to go down to the Warriors 13th most used three man combo this week (Poole/Mulder/JTA: -20.8 net in 30 minutes) before you find an aggressively bad performance. If you keep scrolling down here, you’ll note that a lot of the very bad three man combos this week featured Jordan Poole.
Last week’s five most used two man combos (positive lineups bolded):
Curry/Green: +7.4 net (117.5 ORTG) in 87 minutes.
Wiggins/Green: -2.4 net (113.7 ORTG) in 76 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins: -5.3 net (110.6 ORTG) in 73 minutes.
Wiggins/Looney: -0.7 net (106.8 ORTG) in 69 minutes.
Poole/JTA: -27.2 net (86.6 ORTG) in 53 minutes.
So mostly meh, save for Curry/Green. It’s not great to see Poole/JTA, a pair you’d like to see play similar roles for the bench as Steph and Draymond do for the starters, get smacked down and struggle to score. Of course, we should consider that blowout losses skew small sample sizes in weird ways, but it’s still not ideal for that combo to struggle, especially if the Warriors want to survive minutes without Steph in the playoffs. And so on that mildly depressing note, we move onto Poole watch.
POOLE WATCH BABY!!!
So after I made my optimistic and bold prediction that Jordan Poole could outplay a second contract of >$20 million annually, he put up a few clunkers. It’s fair to say that Poole is probably not ever going to be near the 40% mark from the three point line given his degree of shot difficulty. He’s down to 34.6% from three on the year and to my eyes, it looks like he’s struggling to get his legs under him on his deep shots as well as his drives to the basket. We’ll take a look in a second, but I suspect he did poorly from the restricted area this last week, which has been one of his most surprising strengths this year.
Poole vs. Dallas:
10 points on 3/14 FG, 2/7 3P, and 2/2 FT with 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 turnovers and 0 stocks.
Poole vs. Minnesota:
5 points on 2/6 FG, 1/3 3P, and 0 FT attempts with 1 rebound, 1 assist, 1 turnover, and no stocks.
Poole vs. Houston:
17 points on 5/12 FG, 2/8 3P, and 5/6 FT with 3 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 turnover, and 2 steals.
It’s worth noting that Poole picked up all 6 of his assists and 5 of his 17 points against Houston in garbage time. So all in all, Poole has mostly struggled this last week when playing meaningful minutes. The Warriors absolutely need Poole at this point in the year, through no fault of his own. When he plays well, he provides a much needed scoring punch to a mostly feckless second unit. But frankly, Poole has been pretty inconsistent since the beginning of the Win Chasing Era — March 29 against Chicago when James Wiseman finally ran a high volume of PNR’s. Poole’s averages since Steve Kerr started taking the season seriously again are: 10.5 points on 35/30/83 splits.
Some inconsistency from the three point line is to be expected given his shot selection and his physical immaturity (as noted in a previous post and expanded upon at length by Kirk Lacob preseason), but what’s more concerning to me is that Poole is struggling to generate efficient two point looks. At one point in the season, Poole’s restricted area percentages were as high as 75%. He looked confident and explosive getting to the hoop and I felt good every time he drive. That’s changed. This last week, I’ve seen Poole shoot it off of the bottom of the backboard several times and it looks like he’s just struggling to get the burst he needs to hang and finish like he was doing earlier in the season.
Poole’s numbers on the season (rounded up):
10.9 points on 42/35/88 splits (56% TS) with 2 assists, 1.7 rebounds, 1 turnover, and 0.8 stocks.
64.9% restricted area FG on 77 attempts, 36.1% mid range on 36 attempts, 53% corner 3P on 26 attempts, 31.6% above the break 3P on 190 attempts, 52.6% floaters FG on 38 attempts (shooting splits here.)
+0.1 OBPM, -1.4 DBPM, -1.3 BPM (Basketball Reference) / 2.86 ORPM, -1.62 DRPM, +1.24 RPM (ESPN) / +0.5 offensive EPM, -1.1 defensive EPM, 0.5 EPM (Dunks & Threes)
While his 3 point shooting and overall FG% have taken a hit, the numbers are still mostly tolerable even after a rough recent stretch.
RIP Kelly Oubre Jr./Andrew Wiggins pregame coinflip
Now that Kelly Oubre Jr. is set to miss an extended period of time, if not the rest of the season, we will no longer get to see if the Warriors can keep up their .785 win percentage when Kelly Oubre and Andrew Wiggins BOTH score above their average points per game. Alas.
While Oubre has glaring flaws that may not be fixable in Steve Kerr’s motion heavy system, he was at the very least, a moderately capable volume scorer. Of course, his inconsistency from the three and his paltry 43.8% FG on layups hurt the Warriors in a lot of games. But in his brief time coming off the bench, Oubre was averaging 17 points a game and generally looked a lot more comfortable in the bench unit’s more ISO/PNR centric lineups than he did getting heavy minutes with Steph Curry. I was curious to see how he’d play out the rest of the season and how he’d perform in the playoffs, but chances are we’ve seen the last of Oubre.
I suspect that Oubre’s minutes going to Juan Toscano Anderson helps the Warriors in the abstract. But this team is exhausted and until Damion Lee comes back, the Warriors have all of 8 guys that Steve Kerr will actually play meaningful minutes. A tired team needs as many bodies as it can get. And now that Jordan Poole has gone on an extended slump (or if you’re less optimistic about his future, come back down to earth), the Warriors will desperately need volume scoring from their role players.
Because I don’t think they’ll get any consistent volume scoring from non-Steph players, I don’t feel particularly optimistic about the next few games, even if the Warriors have an easy schedule. I can’t exactly say I’ll miss Oubre, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t mind having him as an option for this injury riddled Warriors team.
So now that he’s out (presumably) for the rest of the season, we can run the numbers on the fictional Wiggins/Oubre pregame coin flip to decide who gets to have a good game:
The Warriors’ record when Kelly Oubre Jr. scores 16 or more points / Andrew Wiggins scores 18 or more points in the same game: 11-3.
The Warriors’ record when Kelly Oubre Jr. scores 16 or more points / Andrew Wiggins scores 18 or more points in the same game AND Steph Curry plays*: 11-1
The Warriors’ record when only ONE OF or NEITHER Kelly Oubre Jr. scores 16 or more points / Andrew Wiggins scores 18 or more points in the same game: 21-29.
The Warriors’ record when Steph Curry scores 30 or more points in a game: 23-13.
The Warriors’ record when Steph Curry scores 30 or more points in a game OR Kelly Oubre Jr. scores 16 or more points / Andrew Wiggins scores 18 or more points in the same game: 30-16.
The Warriors’ record when Steph Curry scores less than 30 points and only ONE OF or NEITHER Kelly Oubre Jr. scores 16 or more points / Andrew Wiggins scores 18 or more points in the same game: 2-16.
*Steph only scored 30 or more points in four of these games.
Isn’t inconsistency fun? I’m sure we have more of it to look forward to!
What does this next week have in store for the Warriors?
In about an hour, the Warriors will play the first of two back-to-back road games against the New Orleans Pelicans. The Warriors then have games on Thursday and Saturday against the tanking Oklahoma City Thunder, who went 1-15 in the month of April and began the month of May with a 57 point loss to the Indiana Pacers. The Warriors should at the very least, go 2-2 this week. But I know better than to actually trust the Warriors take care of business, so part of me fully expects them to go 2-2. There’s no way the Warriors go 1-3 — right? — but 3-1 just doesn’t feel attainable after watching this Warriors team get bullied by the Mavericks and then let Anthony Edwards close them out on the road the next game.
The Pelicans went 7-10 last month, but outside of an impressive win in early April against the 76ers, their other wins came against bad teams (OKC, Cleveland, and Houston amongst others) and a load managed Clippers team. Seriously, the Pelicans haven’t won a game against a good team in nearly a month. I still wouldn’t put it past the Warriors to trick one of or both of their games in New Orleans, especially if Steph is anything less than immortal, but the Warriors have a chance to pad up their win total if they take care of business this week.
What will I be watching for this week?
Zion Williamson mostly. I figure that if Draymond Green, Juan Toscano Anderson, and Kevon Looney can hold their own against Zion, they’ll win both of their games against the Pelicans. Zion is averaging 27 points a game on absolutely absurd 62.7% 2P FG. He’s taken nearly 80% of all of his shots this year in the restricted area and converts at 67.8%, this despite playing on a team starved of spacing and high IQ vets (sound familiar?) This will be the first time Draymond Green ever plays against Zion Williamson and I’m hoping that he takes this challenge personally (as he seems to do against other premier bigs and phenoms, most notably Nikola Jokic, who he seems to love humiliating).
My big concern with Draymond, and really all of the Warriors’ bigs/wings against Zion, is that I struggle to see how they’ll defend that many Zion possessions without fouling out or conceding easy bucket after easy bucket in order not to foul. I suspect that a younger and more explosive Draymond Green would fare better against Zion, but I’d be shocked if Draymond doesn’t get cooked a fair amount by someone as explosive as Zion. I love Juan Toscano Anderson, but I don’t think he’s much of a match for Zion. As for Kevon Looney, well if he struggles with the human bulldozer that is Enes Kanter, I can only imagine what Zion will do in isolation against Loongod.
I’m not going to expand much time on the tanking Thunder because... they’re tanking. The Warriors already blew them out earlier in the year and frankly, I don’t feel like talking about another team’s fringe NBA players at length. But I will take this moment to note that Moses Brown, who the Thunder had on a two-way contract before converting his deal, is exactly the type of young big you can find on a scrap heap for cheap rather than, say, using the 2nd overall pick on one. Whoops!
My prediction for the week:
I’m feeling good. I probably shouldn’t. But it’s a nice day out and I’d like the good vibes to continue, so I’ll say the Warriors go 3-1 this week. I will, however, hedge to say that if Andrew Wiggins doesn’t play tonight (he’s questionable as of 45 minutes before tip off), they’ll go 2-2 on the week. If he doesn’t play against New Orleans at all, well 1-3 sounds about right.