Warriors' week-in-review: 11/15 - 11/22
Steve Kerr's lineups without Andre Iguodala or Gary Payton II, Jordan Poole shifting his shot profile to more attempts inside arc, the glory of Steph Curry, and an early-season look at on/off stats
Warriors week-in-review: 11/15 - 11/22
Who did the Warriors play?
The Warriors played three games on the road against the Brooklyn Nets, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Detroit Pistons, and then came home for a Sunday evening game against the Toronto Raptors.
How did they do?
The Warriors went 4-0.
How did that happen?
The Warriors followed up their disappointing loss to the Charlotte Hornets with a 117-99 win against the Brooklyn Nets — their most complete and impressive victory of the season. Steph Curry and Draymond Green played with intensity and purpose from the get-go and the energy of the crowd at the Barclays Center gave this game a playoff feel. Kevin Durant and Steph Curry scored 12 points each in the first quarter and the Nets led 34-31 at the end of a very evenly matched opening period.
The recent play of Jonathan Kuminga was strong enough that Steve Kerr rewarded him with rotation minutes in the Warriors’ most important game of the season and although Kuminga did not reach the majestic highs of his minutes against the Bulls or Hornets the week prior, he had an electrifying weakside block of a James Harden layup:
With a little less than two minutes left in the half, the game was tied, but Steph Curry and Andrew Wiggins combined for 11 points to close out the quarter. Wiggins’ points were particularly impressive and well-timed — the Nets held a one-point lead with 26.6 seconds left in the half when Wiggins railed a quick-trigger three-point shot that gave the Warriors a successful two-for-one at the end of the half. Draymond Green got a defensive rebound with under 5 seconds left in the half and pushed the ball in transition for Wiggins to hit this buzzer-beating three to put the Warriors up 63-58 at halftime.
Keeping with a season-long trend, the Warriors came out and crushed the Nets in the third quarter and effectively put the game out of reach. What was surprising about this particular third-quarter run is that Steph Curry and Andrew Wiggins each played less than half of the entire quarter with foul trouble. Steve Kerr tweaked his substitution patterns out of necessity and Jordan Poole played the entire third quarter and much of it alongside Gary Payton II. In the key stretch of the game, the Warriors’ defense shut down Kevin Durant and James Harden, who must have been seeing ghosts after Kevon Looney repeatedly stoned him on drives and Gary Payton II picked lazy passes out of the air to spark the Warriors’ transition run.
The Warriors led by 22 points at the beginning of the 4th quarter and Steve Kerr rolled out Steph Curry for the chance to put the dagger in the Brooklyn Nets, which is exactly what he did. In a little more than 6 minutes, Steph Curry went 3/4 from deep to cap a 37 point night in a mere 27 minutes to send the game to garbage time. And then this happened:
The Warriors, of course, followed up their most impressive game of the season with a 104-89 nail-biter victory against a severely depleted Cleveland Cavaliers who were down Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Collin Sexton, and Lauri Markkanen, who comprise 4/5 of their starting lineup. The Cavaliers scored the first 10 points of the game and looked like the more aggressive and coherent team, despite being undermanned. In the first half, the Warriors struggled to contain Darius Garland off the dribble and third-year player, Dean Wade, hit threes and leveraged his shooting ability to make smart plays attacking closeouts, much to the (predictable and unreasonable) consternation of Warriors’ play-by-play announcer, Bob Fitzgerald.
The Warriors managed to keep it close in the first half because Nemanja Bjelica bullied the Cavs with playmaking off the dribble and three-point shotmaking and because Steph Curry had 15 points in nearly as many minutes. The rest of the Warriors, however, were pretty bad and combined to shoot 1/10 from deep. The expected third-quarter run never came for the Warriors — instead, the Cavs grew their lead from three points to 13 as Steve Kerr, desperate for any signs of life for his team, re-inserted Juan Toscano-Anderson into the rotation. This decision looked ugly at first — JTA fouled Kevin Love on a three-point attempt and was called for a traveling violation under the hoop shortly after he checked in.
Steve Kerr’s decision to keep JTA in the game paid huge dividends in the fourth quarter when a lineup of Curry/Lee/JTA/OPJ/Bjelica went on a 13-0 to start the period and give the Warriors an 83-81 lead. Toscano-Anderson was at the center of the action in the fourth quarter with tough rebounds and stout defense, but the true star of the quarter was Steph Curry, who finished the game with 40 points, scored 20 points in the fourth quarter, and was directly responsible for 33 of the Warriors’ 36 points in the final period.
The next night, the Warriors went to Detroit for a back-to-back against a lowly Pistons team and opted to rest their most veteran and injury-prone players, Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, and Otto Porter Jr. The absence of the Warriors’ key players opened up minutes and shots and the two biggest beneficiaries were Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins, who combined to take more than half of the Warriors’ shots in a 105-102 victory.
Poole and Wiggins came out firing with accuracy from the start of the game and combined for 19 of the Warriors’ 26 points in the first quarter. The Pistons briefly regained the lead in the second quarter, but the Warriors closed out the half on with a mini-run to take a 56-51 lead going into halftime. That lead ballooned to 16 points by the end of the third quarter as they went 5-10 from deep and received a balanced scoring output, spearheaded by Andrew Wiggins’ 10 points in the quarter.
The good things that happened in the third quarter and early minutes of the fourth quarter were undone by the hideous crunch-time offense of Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole, who took turns overdribbling and regressing to the worst versions of themselves to let the Pistons back in the game. Consecutive turnovers and missed shots by Wiggins and Poole, who had 27 and 32 points each in the game, allowed the Pistons to stay alive until the final seconds of the game and nearly send the game to overtime on this hideous final possession, which you can see below:
Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole followed up their high-scoring games against the Pistons with 32 and 33 points each in a 119-104 home victory against the Toronto Raptors where Steph Curry only took 10 shots and finished the night with a meager 12 points. Steph Curry’s quiet night was a function of an aggressive Raptors’ defense that worked hard to limit Curry’s shot attempts at the expense of... pretty much everything else —- the non-Steph Warriors went 21/39 from deep on a buffet of easy three-point looks. This Twitter thread, courtesy of @r/warriors, sums up the Raptors’ defense quite well:
The Warriors got solid minutes from two-way guard and birthday boy extraordinaire, Chris Chiozza, as the Raptors’ aggressive defense on Curry gave the other Warriors ample opportunities to make plays off of the dribble. Chiozza hit two threes and had a season-high 11 points in his minutes, but what I enjoyed most was seeing him... slip on-ball screens for Steph Curry and make plays when the Raptors trapped Steph. Below is one such example:
The Warriors led by 14 points going into the third quarter and got 20 combined points from Wiggins and Poole in the period, but the Raptors managed to keep the Warriors’ lead at 15 going into the fourth. When Jonathan Kuminga checked into the game with 1:54 left in the quarter, the Warriors had a 20 point lead, but an ugly turnover and missed three by Kuminga allowed the Raptors to cut that lead to 15 points. Kuminga did, however, play excellent defense on the final possession of the quarter on Fred VanVleet, which you can see here. The Raptors got within 10 points around the 7-minute mark of the fourth quarter, but Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins closed the Raptors out with big shots, and Draymond Green’s defense made it nearly impossible for the Raptors to get clean looks in isolation.
What lineups played lots of minutes this week?
As we did last week, we’ll start this section of the week-in-review by providing a point of reference for league average offensive rating. League-average ORTG is now at 107.9. Last week, that number was at 107.6 and that league-average ORTG has climbed every week this season, so it seems that The Athletic’s Seth Partnow was right to predict that the historically-low ORTG of the early weeks of the season would not last. If league-average ORTG continues its upward trajectory and can increase another .7 points, it will finally be in line with the ORTG of the 2017-18 season.
Before we examine last week’s lineups, we’ll take a brief look at the 15 most used 5-man lineups from the entire season, courtesy of Cleaning the Glass:
Curry/Poole/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +3 net rating (111.9 ORTG) in 34 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Wiggins/JTA/Looney: +38.3 net rating (123.4 ORTG) in 24 minutes.
Curry/Lee/Iguodala/Kuminga/OPJ: +15.8 net rating (94.7 ORTG) in 9 minutes.
Poole/GPII//Wiggins/Green/Bjelica: +6.7 net rating (113.3 ORTG) in 7 minutes.
Chiozza/Poole/Lee/Kuminga/Bjelica: +16.7 net rating (150 ORTG) in 6 minutes.
Chiozza/Curry/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +61.5 net rating (133.3 ORTG) in 6 minutes.
Poole/Moody/JTA/Kuminga/Bjelica: -83.3 net rating (33.3 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Wiggins/OPJ/Green: +27.3 net rating (118.2 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Curry/Lee/JTA/OPJ/Bjelica: +150 net rating (150 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Poole/Lee/Wiggins/Green/Looney: +12.5 net rating (137.5 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Lee/Green/Looney: +75 net rating (137.5 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Chiozza/Curry/Lee/JTA/OPJ: -25 net rating (100 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Curry/Lee/JTA/OPJ/Looney: +26.7 net rating (160 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Note that I’ve italicized two lineups here. Those lineups are the only ones that played more than one game together. Andre Iguodala’s rest from knee soreness and Gary Payton II’s hernia flare-up messed with Steve Kerr’s rotation and the result is that various combinations that hadn’t played much this season saw run this past week. The second most-used lineup this past week is also the third-most used lineup on the entire season, per CTG, but NBA.com’s lineup stats tell us that this lineup played all 24 of its minutes in one single game — the Warriors’ victory against the Detroit Pistons where Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala, and Otto Porter Jr. did not play. This is all to say, these 5-man lineups are unusual and most likely do not offer predictive value.
Here are the Warriors’ three-man combos that played >20 minutes last week (positive ones bolded):
Poole/Wiggins/Looney: +17.7 net rating (122.3 ORTG) in 66 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins/Green: +5.2 net rating (116.4 ORTG) in 58 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Green: +8.7 net rating (118.4 ORTG) in 52 minutes.
Wiggins/Green/Looney: +12.3 net rating (120 ORTG) in 46 minutes.
Poole/Green/Looney: +15.4 net rating (120.9 ORTG) in 45 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Looney: +10.6 net rating (112.9 ORTG) in 43 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Green: +10.5 net rating (114 ORTG) in 43 minutes.
Curry/Green/Looney: +19 net rating (116.7 ORTG) in 42 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Wiggins: +6.1 net rating (114.6 ORTG) in 41 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Looney: +11.1 net rating (113.9 ORTG) in 36 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins/JTA: +36.7 net rating (124.2 ORTG) in 34 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Wiggins: +32.5 net rating (120 ORTG) in 33 minutes.
Curry/Lee/OPJ: +50.8 net rating (115.9 ORTG) in 31 minutes.
GPII/Wiggins/JTA: +37.4 net rating (123.6 ORTG) in 29 minutes.
Wiggins/JTA/Looney: +14.7 net rating (121.8 ORTG) in 29 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Looney: +47.1 net rating (123.3 ORTG) in 29 minutes.
GPII/Wiggins/Looney: +20.2 net rating (116.7 ORTG) in 28 minutes.
Poole/GPII/JTA: +34.6 net rating (123.1 ORTG) in 27 minutes.
Poole/JTA/Looney: +38.7 net rating (128.8 ORTG) in 27 minutes.
GPII/JTA/Looney: +24.8 net rating (120.8 ORTG) in 25 minutes.
Every single one of these lineups has a positive net rating. That’s good! Steph Curry is only a participant in 7 of these 20 lineup combos, which is curious. That can probably be attributed to Curry not playing in the Pistons’ game, but it’s still interesting to see so many lineups without Curry in this list. The great performance of Poole/Green/Looney and Poole/GPII/Looney is interesting to me because both of those combos played a big role in the third-quarter defensive shutdown of the Brooklyn Nets. Poole/Green/Looney played in three games this week whereas Poole/GPII/Looney only played in two games this week.
Poole/Wiggins: +19.6 net rating (121.4 ORTG) in 88 minutes.
Wiggins/Looney: +11.3 net rating (119.2 ORTG) in 77 minutes.
Poole/Looney: +23.8 net rating (123.8 ORTG) in 72 minutes.
Wiggins/Green: +9.9 net rating (119.9 ORTG) in 70 minutes.
Poole/Green: +15.7 net rating (120.6 ORTG) in 70 minutes.
Curry/Green: +21.4 net rating (124.6 ORTg) in 62 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins: +12.9 net rating (116.4 ORTG) in 57 minutes.
Green/Looney: +21.4 net rating (122.3 ORTG) in 51 minutes.
Curry/OPJ: +33.3 net rating (116.2 ORTG) in 49 minutes.
Curry/Looney: +16.8 net rating (116.8 ORTG) in 48 minutes.
Poole/JTA: +8 net rating (109.2 ORTG) in 44 minutes.
Poole/GPII: +36 net rating (120.9 ORTG) in 43 minutes.
Curry/Poole: +12.7 net rating (116.1 ORTG) in 43 minutes.
GPII/Wiggins: +30 net rating (124.1 ORTG) in 42 minutes.
Wiggins/JTA: +16 net rating (114.8 ORTG) in 42 minutes.
Curry/Lee: +46.2 net rating (116.4 ORTG) in 36 minutes.
GPII/JTA: +26 net rating (121.3 ORTG) in 33 minutes.
GPII/Looney: +31.1 net rating (117.9 ORTG) in 33 minutes.
JTA/Looney: +15 net rating (123 ORTG) in 33 minutes.
Lee/OPJ: +49 net rating (113.6 ORTG) in 33 minutes.
Poole/Bjelica: -27.8 net rating (101.5 ORTG) in 31 minutes.
The only two-man combo to come up negative here is Poole/Bjelica, which not only struggled to score at a league-average rate but got obliterated on defense to the tune of a 129.2 ORTG. Only three other combos in the above list allowed opposing offenses to score at or above the league average rate — Wiggins/Looney (107.9 DRTG), Green/Wiggins (109.9 DRTG), and JTA/Looney (107.9 DRTG). The flip side of that is the 8 different two-man combos that had a DRTG below 100: Curry/OPJ (82.8 DRTG), Poole/GPII (84.9 DRTG), GPII/Wiggins (94.1 DRTG), Wiggins/JTA (98.8 DRTG), Curry/Lee (70.3 DRTG!!!), GPII/JTA (95.3 DRTG), GPII/Looney (86.8 DRTG), and Lee/OPJ (64.6 DRTG!!!!!). Some of these sample sizes are undoubtedly skewed by big minutes against subpar competition
POOLE WATCH BABY!!!
Jordan Poole entered a shooting slump last week and it followed him into the first two games of this week. To Poole’s credit, his shooting profile tilted more towards shots inside the arc this past week, and even though he went 0/7 from deep against the Brooklyn Nets, his well-timed third-quarter drives to the hoop showed an astute sense of timing and table-setting in key minutes without Steph Curry. Poole followed up that game, however, with an absolute clunker against the Cleveland Cavaliers in which he and Andrew Wiggins sat most of the second half after their inattention on the defensive boards got the Cavs multiple second-chance points in an ugly third quarter.
Steph Curry’s rest against the Detroit Pistons on Friday night gave Jordan Poole an opportunity to soak up a high volume of possessions on offense, to the tune of nearly 30 more touches than normal:
Poole was absolutely dominant as an interior scorer against the Pistons and showed off his full bag of tricks as he got to the hoop over and over again:
Unfortunately, Poole went away from the things that made him so successful in the first three quarters — attacking on the move and bursting to the hoop out of triple-threat position — and nearly gave away the game late in the fourth quarter with overdribbling in ISO situations. Ultimately, Poole’s crunch-time performance didn’t cost the Warriors, and he followed up that performance with arguably his best game of the season on a night when the Warriors needed their supporting cast to punish the Toronto Raptors for being their aggressive defense on Steph Curry.
Poole went from 29.9% from three to 33.3% after going 8/11 from deep against Toronto and he only took two shots inside the arc, but he was aggressive off of the dribble and created open looks for his teammates when the Raptors trapped Steph Curry. Poole finished the game with 33 points and 4 assists, but he did have five turnovers and five fouls. Something to keep an eye on — Poole has now racked up 5 fouls in three games this season and has gotten up to four fouls in three other games.
Jordan Poole’s stats last week:
11/16 vs. the Nets: 17 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 block, and 5 turnovers on 6/13 FG, 0/7 3P, and 5/6 FT in 28:10 minutes.
11/18 vs. the Cavaliers: 8 points, 2 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal on 3/10 FG, 1/5 3P, and 1/1 FT attempts in 23:37 minutes.
11/19 vs. the Pistons: 32 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 0 blocks and steals, and 4 turnovers on 13/22 FG, 4/8 3P, and 2/2 FT attempts in 37:24 minutes.
11/21 vs. the Raptors: 33 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 0 blocks and steals, and 5 turnovers on 10/13 FG, 8/11 3P, and 5/6 FT attempts.
Through 17 games this season, Jordan Poole is averaging 17.4 points, 3.0 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.2 blocks, and 2.6 turnovers per game on 46/33/92 splits in 29.9 minutes a game.
Here’s a visual representation of Poole’s shot chart this season, courtesy of Positive Residual:
This shot chart has much more red than it did earlier in the season. It’s nice to see Poole’s corner and mid-range shooting tick up and we’re approaching league average eFG% on both wings now. To that point, Poole is now up to 73% from the restricted area and 54.3% of his 46 makes are un-assisted. Poole ranks #15 in the entire league in 2P FG% and the only guard who ranks higher than him is Pat Connaughton, who has 40 2P FGA to Poole’s 113, and 2/3 of Connaughton’s makes inside the arc have been assisted.
Assorted notes
I’m going to use bullet points here to put together some stray thoughts:
Speaking of two-point field goals, Andrew Wiggins is now shooting 56.7% on shots inside the arc, which is nearly four percentage points above his previous career-high of 52.9%, which he set last year. Wiggins has been even better than Jordan Poole in the restricted area and is shooting 73.1% on 57 makes. Prior to Andrew Wiggins’ breakout game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, he was driving to the hoop 6.3 times per game and shooting 40.7% on his drives, which was generating 2.9 points per game. Since that game, Wiggins is driving 8 times a game and he’s shooting 57.9% on his drives and those drives are generating 5.4 points a game. Whether or not Wiggins’ aggression and effectiveness on drives are sustainable is a valid question, but this version of Andrew Wiggins has been a revelation for the Warriors. You can see the Warriors’ stats on drives for the whole season here.
Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole’s effectiveness at the hoop stands in contrast — at least in my memory — to Otto Porter Jr. and Kevon Looney’s ground-bound finishing. I do know, that Looney’s restricted area FG% was better than I expected the last time I looked at it, but I didn’t think it merited a bullet point. This time, I do want to look at his and OPJ’s percentages in the restricted area to see how the eyeball test matches up with reality. OPJ is shooting 63.6% from the restricted area but... he’s only taken 11 shots from that range on the entire season against 6 paint non-restricted area shots (33.3%), 8 mid-range shots (50%), 14 corner threes (35.7%), and 38 above-the-break threes (44.7%). Kevon Looney, meanwhile, is shooting 59.6% from the restricted area on 52 attempts and has been blocked 6 times on these attempts. That’s not great. Looney has also taken 8 mid-range shots this year and made... one of them.
Steph Curry’s three-point shooting is starting to normalize — he’s shooting 34% on open threes and 43.9% on wide-open threes, while he’s a hilarious 53.2% on tightly guarded threes and 66.7% on tightly guarded threes. Those tightly guarded threes, however only account for 0.2 of his 13 three-point attempts per game.
Caveat for small-sample size notwithstanding, Gary Payton II is now shooting 47.3% from three after going 3/4 from deep against the Detroit Pistons. Payton II’s four three-point attempts accounted for 21% of all of his three-point attempts this year — that should give you a sense of how volatile these numbers are at this point in the season — but I was encouraged by the high arc on his shot and the willingness he had to fire the moment he was open. Gary Payton II’s non-garbage time differential/net rating from Cleaning the Glass is at a bonkers +26.8, which ranks in the 98th percentile in the entire NBA. GPII’s points per shot attempt (PSA) is at 1.5, which is in the 100th percentile and is improbably better than Steph Curry’s 100th percentile 1.30 PSA. You can see those stats here.
Cleaning the Glass has become one of my favorite NBA stat sites and their on/off stats, which are linked here, are fascinating: you won’t be surprised to see GPII, Curry, Nemanja Bjelica, and Andre Iguodala rate well, but Draymond Green has a -2.1 differential/net rating and Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, and Damion Lee rate out at -9.4, -10.4, and -10.8 respectively.
What does this next week have in store for the Warriors?
The Warriors play the Portland Trail Blazers and the Philadelphia 76ers at home before facing the Los Angeles Clippers at the Staples Center on Sunday afternoon.
My prediction for this week
The Portland Trail Blazers have been underwhelming to start the season — Damian Lillard is being outshot by Jordan Poole and CJ McCollum has been by far their most efficient scorer — but they don’t have the defensive flexibility to shut down the Warriors, so I expect this to be a Warriors’ win unless Damian Lillard breaks his shooting slump in a huge way. The Philadelphia 76ers have been without Joel Embiid for two weeks after he entered the NBA’s health and protocols after testing positive for COVID-19 and have gone 1-6 in his absence. Embiid is not expected to return against the Warriors and I don’t think the Sixers have the offensive firepower to outgun this Warriors team. The Los Angeles Clippers, however, do scare me as their coach, Ty Lue, has always had brilliant defensive game plans for Steph Curry, who historically struggles at the Staples Center. I expect the Warriors to lose against the Clippers and go 2-1 this week.