The Warriors week in review: 5/10-5/16
Closing out the season 4-0, the mediocre starters, and the best week of Jordan Poole's career.
Who did the Warriors play?
The Warriors finished out the regular season with four home games and faced the Utah Jazz on Monday, the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday, the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday, and the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday.
How did they do?
4-0!
What happened?
The Warriors put together what might have been their best week of the season with impressive and necessary wins. I think most Warriors fans would have accepted going 3-1 over the final four games of the season. Speaking for myself, I was fully prepared for a 2-2 week knowing the Warriors’ propensity for playing down to their level of competition and what horrors could follow a cold Steph Curry night. But the Warriors delivered time and time again in the last four games of the season, despite a relatively inefficient week from Steph Curry (34.3 points, 7 assists, and 4.7 boards on 41/28/92 splits).
I think the biggest story of the week is probably Jordan Poole’s play. We’ll get to that later, but we’ll use that as a lede to talk about the Warriors’ defeat of the Utah Jazz, who were without Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley. Poole gave the Warriors 20 points on 6-11 shooting and 4-9 from three off of the bench, which helped offset a brutal night from distance from Steph, who shot 3-13 from deep. The Warriors also got an unexpected and always welcome 12 points from Draymond Green, who scored 10 of his whopping 12 points in the first half.
The game plan against the Jazz was more or less what you’d expect — get Rudy Gobert into pick and rolls and take advantage of the Jazz’s depleted shotmaking ability in the absence of Mitchell and Conley. Bojan Bogdanovic and Jordan Clarkson took 54 of the Jazz’s 91 shots on Monday night and as you might have imagined, the Jazz mostly struggled to score until the fourth quarter. The Warriors had a 14 point lead at the beginning of the final period, but things tightened up as Jordan Clarkson had 24 points on 13 shots (he was 8-20 for the rest of the game) and actually tied the game at the 1:47 mark and then briefly took the lead with 1:11 left in the game. But the Warriors eeked out a 119-116 win in the final minute of a Steph Curry brick leading to a reload three reminiscent of Steph’s famous shot against the New Orleans Pelicans in the 2015 playoffs off of a Mo Speights offensive rebound.
The next night the Warriors played the Phoenix Suns and scrapped out a 122-116 victory in a game they were down as many as 16 points. From the 4:49 mark in the 1st quarter to the 7:45 mark in the fourth quarter, the Suns held a lead. But in the final minutes of the game, the Warriors got clutch shots from Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, and Juan Toscano-Anderson in quick succession to put away a stunned Phoenix team. It was, frankly, a shocking win. Steph Curry went 7-22 from the field and 1-11 from the three point line and yet, Andrew Wiggins had arguably the best game of his Warriors’ career and scored 38 points on 17-24 shooting and Jordan Poole chipped in 20 points off of the bench on 6-10 shooting and 3-7 from the three point line. We’ll get into this in further depth during our lineups section of this post, but it was remarkable to see Poole close against an experienced team like the Suns and hold his own. In the fourth quarter, Poole and Wiggins combined for 23 points, 10 of which came in the deciding final three minutes of the game. It was exactly what every Warriors fan imagined at the beginning of the year — Jordan Poole closing out top seeds in the West. /s
The Warriors’ next game came against the New Orleans Pelicans who were without Zion Williamson or any playoff prospects. By this point, the results of the game were meaningless in regards to the Warriors’ seeding prospects, so Andrew Wiggins took his first game off for the entire year and Steph Curry and Draymond Green joined him on the bench. Mychal Mulder had a hot shooting night in a meaningless game — shocking! — and had a career-high 28 points on 10-17 shooting and shot 7-13 from beyond the arc. Jordan Poole also had a career-high 38 points and the game winning shot and Juan Toscano-Anderson put up a quintessential Draymond line of 9-9-9.
Their chemistry and their ability to manufacture efficient looks out of their DHO and PNR sets was probably the most notable thing about the game as one could imagine how their two-man game could anchor bench lineups in playoff games and (hopefully) in the years to come. Beyond that, there’s not much to say about the game. It was a blowout for a while until it wasn’t, which coincided with what were hopefully Alen Smailagic’s final NBA minutes, but the Warriors scraped out a moderately satisfying win in (meaningless) crunch time.
Yesterday, the Warriors clinched the 8th seed with a 113-101 victory of the Memphis Grizzlies. I wrote a more in depth recap about that game here, so I’ll briefly summarize the important parts; Steph Curry shot a career high 36 times and went a mere 9-22 from the three point line, Jordan Poole played closing minutes and his clutch shots yet again, and Andrew Wiggins made hustle play after hustle play to help the Warriors keep the Grizzlies at arm’s distance — that is until Dillon Brooks made it a close game in the 4th quarter. The Grizzlies’ chances effectively evaporated when Draymond Green fouled out Dillon Brooks on a clever (and infuriating) flop. From that point on, the Warriors turned on the jets and Steph Curry hit clutch shot after clutch shot, which culminated in his heartwarming homage to Baron Davis. And with that win, the Warriors clinched the eighth seed in the play-in tournament and ensured they’ll have to lose twice to not advance to the real playoffs.
What lineups played lots of minutes this week?
Normally I do the five most used five-man combos, but I’m going to list six today because one of the lineups, which is italicized, only played in one game — the meaningless Pelicans game without Steph/Wiggins/Dray. So here are last week’s six most used five-man combos (positive lineups bolded):
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/Green/Looney: -12.2 net rating (105.6 ORTG) in 45 minutes.
Poole/Mulder/Wiggins/JTA/Looney: -2.4 net rating (100 ORTG) in 21 minutes.
Curry/Mulder/Bazemore/JTA/Green: +12.2 net rating (137.8 ORTG) in 19 minutes.
Poole/Mulder/Bazemore/JTA/Looney: +41.9 net rating (145.2 ORTG) in 13 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins/JTA/Green: -8.7 net rating (95.5 ORTG) in 10 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Wiggins/JTA/Green: +61.8 net rating (131.8 ORTG) in 9 minutes.
So I think this is one of the more interesting data we’ve gotten from the five-man lineups in quite a while. The starters, who had mostly ran through their opponents the two weeks prior, played pretty bad this last week and did so in very important games. And yet, the Warriors went undefeated on the week. I’m struck by how well the Curry/Mulder/Bazemore/JTA/Green lineup performed in 19 minutes, but it’s definitely concerning that the +12.2 net rating is built on the backs of an astronomically high ORTG of 137.8. The Poole/Mulder/Bazemore/JTA/Looney lineup seems meaningless — I doubt we see it in the playoffs and it only got rolled out in the Thunder game.
The lineup that I’m most fascinated by here is Curry/Poole/Wiggins/JTA/Green. That lineup closed out against the Suns and saw significant minutes against the Utah Jazz and Memphis Grizzlies and not just held its own, but was bonkers on offense (65.8% EFG and 69.8% TS), had a 70 DRTG in high leverage minutes, and had a TREB of 57.9%, which is nearly 8 percentage points above league average TREB%. You can make sense of why this lineup might tread water — you have two creators in Steph/Poole, two versatile defenders who execute DHO’s and make advanced reads to get lead shooters into open shots, and a high level on-ball defender in Wiggins — but for this lineup to crush other teams? It’s shocking. And it’s incredibly encouraging for what may come in the playoffs.
Here are the five most used three-man combos used last week (positive ones bolded):
Curry/Bazemore/Green: -2.5 net rating (117 ORTG) in 88 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Green: +5.3 net rating (115.9 ORTG) in 74 minutes.
Bazemore/Wiggins/Green: -10.5 net rating (104.1 ORTG) in 60 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Looney: +5.7 net rating (117.1 ORTG) in 60 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore/Wiggins: -11.6 net rating (105.8 ORTG) in 60 minutes.
Three man combos are a bit more messy statistically, but I think it’s interesting that Bazemore three-man combos here rate out negatively. I’m inclined to think that has to do with his minutes being tied more to the starters, who, as we already discussed, didn’t play great this last week.
Here are the six most used two-man combos used last week (positive ones bolded and a tie for fifth most used combo):
Curry/Green: +7.6 net rating (122.6 ORTG) in 103 minutes
Bazemore/Green: -1.4 net rating (117.2 ORTG) in 90 minutes.
Curry/Bazemore: -3.6 net rating (115.1 ORTG) in 90 minutes.
Poole/JTA: +13.4 net rating (122.9 ORTG) in 84 minutes.
Wiggins/Green: +2.4 net rating (114.3 ORTG) in 83 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins: +11.7 net rating (119.8 ORTG) in 83 minutes.
Again, Bazemore minutes, which are likely tied to the starters, come up negative. Poole/JTA coming up positive is interesting, considering that their bench unit lineup (Poole/ Mulder/Wiggins/JTA/Looney) struggled to score and had a -2.4 net rating. I’d assume this combo coming up positive is resultant of Poole and Juan playing big minutes with Steph/Dray in crunch time.
POOLE WATCH BABY!!
Jordan Poole had arguably the best week of his NBA career. It’s possible that his performance in the week following his return from the G-League was more important in the grand scheme of his career, but I think this is the week that Jordan Poole solidified himself as a playoff contributor as a second year player. Will he be a positive playoff contributor? We’ll find out soon, but with how he’s played this last week, and really, over the last two months, there’s probably no way he’s going to play less than 15 minutes a game if the Warriors make it out of the play-in tournament. So let’s see what Poole did this week:
20 points, 1 rebound, 0 assists, and 0 turnovers on 6/11 shooting and 4/9 3P in 18:43 minutes vs the Utah Jazz.
20 points, 4 rebounds, 0 assists, and 0 turnover on 6/10 shooting and 3/7 3P in 20:33 minutes vs the Phoenix Suns.
38 points, 4 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2 turnovers on 12/22 shooting and 4/9 3P in 33:10 minutes vs the New Orleans Pelicans.
15 points, 3 rebounds, 1 assists, and 3 turnovers on 5/9 shooting and 3/7 3P in 24:54 minutes vs the Memphis Grizzlies.
To sum it up, Poole gave the Warriors 23.3 points a game, 3 rebounds, 1.75 assists, and 1.25 turnovers a game on 56/44/96 splits last week. That’s absolutely insane. Poole’s shooting has come and gone in waves for most of the year, so I expect this is a hot streak. That might be a little concerning if that means that this hot streak will lead to a cold spell in the playoffs, but I think the thing I’ve been most encouraged by in this last week is that Poole is creating good looks for others off of the bench and he’s really shown growth in his ability to play off of Steph Curry.
I’ll just highlight this play briefly to demonstrate how Poole could be very important come crunch time in the playoffs. Watch how Poole shoots down to the right corner on the Steph drive to splash an open corner three in crunch time against the Grizzlies.
Assorted roster stuff
On Sunday, the Warriors announced that Kelly Oubre Jr.’s wrist/palm will to be re-evaluated in 7-10 days, so somewhere between the 23rd and 25th of May. Reporter Jason Dumas added that Oubre Jr. “desperately” wants to make a playoff return but said that the pain in the affected area is still “significant.” It seems unlikely the Warriors would get Oubre Jr. back any earlier than the late games of the first round — if they advance that far — but if he does come back, I imagine that his minutes will be limited and Steve Kerr will have a (mercifully) short leash on him.
That same Sunday, the Warriors announced the signing of Gary Payton II, who will now appear on the Warriors’ playoff roster. He is also unlikely to see significant minutes, but Steve Kerr did throw him into the fray to guard Jason Taytum a few weeks back, so you never really know what wild stuff Kerr might do.
What does this next week have in store for the Warriors?
The play-in game on Wednesday against the Los Angeles Lakers and a Twitter hellscape before, after, and during the game.
My prediction for the week:
You really think I’m not going to mine my prediction for content in a preview post? Come on. Check back tomorrow and I’ll have a post for you.