Warriors week-in-review: 11/8 - 11/14
The Warriors can't score without Steph Curry, Jordan Poole's struggles, and Jonathan Kuminga's rotation minutes and what it means going forward.
Who did the Warriors play?
The Warriors finished their 8-game homestand with games against the Atlanta Hawks, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Chicago Bulls before going on the road for a game against the Charlotte Hornets.
How did they do?
The Warriors went 3-1.
How did that happen?
The Warriors blew out the Hawks 127-113, behind 50 points from Steph Curry after a rough first half. Curry came out hot and scored the Warriors’ first 10 points of the game before appearing to injure left his left shoulder and coming out of the game early in the first quarter. This injury scare forced Steve Kerr to go to his bench early, but Curry came back later in the quarter and started the second quarter, which is still an unfamiliar sight.
The Warriors’ second-quarter unit looked out of sorts against a defensively switchable Hawks’ lineup of Delon Wright, Kevin Huerter, Cam Reddish, Danilo Gallinari, and Solomon Hill, and things got really ugly when Trae Young came back into the game and made it a mission to hunt Kevon Looney on switches and rain mid-range pull-ups over him. Late in the second quarter, the Warriors were down 13 points, but they got some momentum when Gary Payton II and Nemanja Bjelica subbed in alongside Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, and Draymond Green, and cut the Hawks’ lead to four points by halftime.
The Warriors took control of the game in the third quarter with stifling defense and absurd shotmaking from Steph Curry, who couldn’t make open shots but repeatedly made ridiculous shots off the dribble against any and all Hawks defenders. Curry had 18 points in the third quarter to put the Warriors up 17 points and Steve Kerr, sensing an opportunity to end the game early, had Curry start the fourth period. Curry was less than spectacular in the fourth quarter and went 2/7 from deep in his quest to put the Hawks out of their misery, but he put the game out of reach with his 50th points on the night and the Warriors pulled their key players to give way to garbage time.
Two nights later, the Warriors moved to 10-1 with a 123-110 victory against the Timberwolves in a surprisingly close game. Steph Curry had a pretty quiet 25 points on 3/9 shooting from deep, but Andrew Wiggins had his most aggressive game of the season and finished the game with 35 points and two huge dunks over his former teammate, Karl-Anthony Towns, which you can see below.
The Timberwolves kept the game close because they got 48 points from second-year guard, Anthony Edwards, and just when it looked like the Warriors were going to break the game open in the third quarter, Draymond Green came out of the game with a thigh contusion. Juan Toscano-Anderson came into the game to replace Green and the Wolves cut a 17-point lead down to 7 points in a matter of minutes. The Warriors took a 9-point lead into the fourth quarter and while they struggled to score without Steph Cury, the second unit kept the Wolves at bay long enough for the starters to come back and let Andrew Wiggins close his former team out with 9 points in the final four minutes of the game.
On Friday night, the Warriors faced off against their toughest competition of the season and blew out the Chicago Bulls 119-93. This Bulls team was not at full strength as their star center, Nikola Vucevic was put into the NBA’s health and safety protocols on Thursday morning, but they looked like the better team for much of the first quarter and used a rotating cast of long-armed defenders to stifle the Warriors’ motion offense. The Warriors found traction in the second quarter by running a box-and-one defense with Gary Payton II matched up against Zach LaVine and went on a mini-run to end the half when subbed in Nemanja Bjelica for Kevon Looney.
The Warriors ran away with the game in the third quarter by locking in defensively against the Bulls and getting aggressive offensive output from Andrew Wiggins and Steph Curry. Wiggins only scored three points in the quarter, but his dribble penetration opened found holes in the Bulls’ defense while Curry buried the Bulls under a steady long-range barrage for 15 points on 5/6 shooting with four made threes.
For the second time this week, Steve Kerr elected to have Steph Curry start the fourth quarter, this time alongside Jonathan Kuminga, who played a featured role in the Warriors’ on both sides of the court. In six pre-garbage time minutes, Kuminga and Curry ran several inverted pick-and-rolls with Curry as the screener and Kuminga got deep into the paint with little issue and either got clean looks at the rim or made smart passes to shooters. On the defensive end, Kuminga held his own against DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine and forced both star wings into difficult shots by playing physical defense and avoiding fouls.
The Warriors lost their second game of the season, 102-106, on the road against the Charlotte Hornets when shots didn’t fall and the offense failed to generate good looks in crunch time. The Hornets played the Warriors evenly in the first quarter despite some sloppy defense that led to repeated buckets on backdoor cuts because LaMelo Ball hit four three-point shots and scored 15 points in the first period. For the second game in a row, Jonathan Kuminga played rotation minutes and impressed. In four minutes, Kuminga had eight points and made heads-up defensive plays, which got him a second stint to close the half. This was the definite high point of the game for Warriors’ fans — Kuminga had two excellent defensive plays on LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges and the Warriors outscored the Hornets 13-7 in the final minutes of the quarter to tie the game up 57-57.
Things could have gotten ugly in the third quarter of Sunday night’s game as Miles Bridges and Terry Rozier combined for 23 points on 8/9 shooting, but Andrew Wiggins had 15 points in the quarter and kept the Warriors in the game just enough for Steph Curry to close out the quarter with two tough threes and put the Warriors up 88-87. Jonathan Kuminga looked good again in his brief fourth-quarter minutes alongside Steph Curry and that’s pretty much the last good thing that happened to the Warriors in the final 12 minutes of the game.
The Warriors trailed 98-99 when Steph Curry subbed back into the game at the 5:02 mark after a minute and a half of rest and they’d score just four more points in the quarter. Steve Kerr elected to close with two lineups fundamentally incapable of creating efficient offense: Curry/GPII/Wiggins/Iguodala/Green and Curry/Wiggins/Igudodala/Green/Looney. This screenshot, courtesy of The Athletic’s Anthony Slater, sums up the Warriors’ crunch time offense better than any words can.
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 107.6. This is .6 points higher than it was last week but still the lowest league average ORTG since the 2015-16 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: +16.6 net rating (124 ORTG) in 55 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Wiggins/Green/Bjelica: -42.4 net rating (71 ORTG) in 13 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Iguodala/OPJ/Bjelica: +69.6 net rating (173.9 ORTG) in 11 minutes.
Curry/Lee/Iguodala/Kuminga/OPJ: +42.3 net rating (92.3 ORTG) in 7 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Iguodala/Green/Bjelica: -61.5 net rating (76.9 ORTG) in 6 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Iguodala/Kuminga/Bjelica: +72.4 net rating (131.3 ORTG) in 6 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Iguodala/Kuminga/OPJ: -6.4 net rating (130 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Poole/Lee/Wiggins/Green/Looney: -50 net rating (110 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Wiggins/Iguodala/Looney: +112.5 net rating (125 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Wiggins/Iguodala/Looney: +114.3 net rating (185.7 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Lee/Iguodala/JTA: -37.5 net rating (100 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Lee/Iguodala/JTA: -41.1 net rating (70 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Poole/Moody/Wiggins/Green/Looney: -28.9 net rating (60 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
A few caveats: we’re operating on small sample sizes and Damion Lee barely played this week because of injury. One thing, however, is absolutely clear — the Warriors were an absolute mess without Steph Curry this past week. As I mentioned in my recap of the Warriors’ loss to the Hornets, Poole/GPII/Wiggins/Green/Bjelica and Poole/GPII/Iguodala/Green/Bjelica are the two non-Steph Curry lineups that have played most often since Steve Kerr started giving Steph Curry some rest in the first and third quarters. Over the course of the entire season, that second lineup with Iguodala in place of Wiggins actually has a +18.7 net rating in 27 possessions. That’s good, but the recent struggles of Jordan Poole and the general lack of shooting in those lineups make me fear that this lineup is bound to end up in the red if it gets more minutes.
It could behoove the Warriors to figure out a way to untangle GPII and Draymond Green from the non-Steph Curry minutes, but that requires some rotation rejiggering that’s above my paygrade. I do like how Steve Kerr’s new rotation patterns for Steph allow for him to play early minutes in the fourth quarter when it’s time to go for the kill shot, so I’m not sure it makes sense to go back to Steph playing all of the first quarter for the sake of the non-Steph lineups.
One possible solution might be to sub in Damion Lee for Andrew Wiggins when Nemanja Bjelica and GPII sub in around the four or five-minute mark for Curry and Looney to trout out Poole/GPII/Lee/Green/Bjelica. Andre Iguodala could then sub in for Draymond Green a few minutes later when Steph Curry subs back in for Poole for the final minutes of the first and third quarters. The second unit could then have either Curry or Poole handling the ball alongside any combination of Lee, Wiggins, Iguodala, Otto Porter Jr., or Jonathan Kuminga.
Here are the Warriors’ three-man combos that played >20 minutes last week (positive ones bolded):
Poole/Wiggins/Green: +1.1 net rating (114.1 ORTG) in 91 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins/Looney: +11.3 net rating (121.1 ORTG) in 76 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Green: +23.3 net rating (125.8 ORTG) in 72 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins/Looney: +16.4 net rating (121.1 ORTG) in 71 minutes.
Wiggins/Green/Looney: +6.7 net rating (118.1 ORTG) in 70 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Wiggins: +20 net rating (127.7 ORTG) in 70 minutes.
Poole/Green/Looney: +9.3 net rating (119.9 ORTG) in 66 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Green: +21.4 net rating (126.2 ORTG) in 64 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Looney: +16.6 net rating (125.6 ORTG) in 62 minutes.
Curry/Green/Looney: +15 net rating (122.7 ORTG) in 59 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Iguodala: +48.4 net rating (129.5 ORTG) in 44 minutes.
GPII/Iguodala/Bjelica: +34.2 net rating (130.1 ORTG) in 33 minutes.
Curry/Iguodala/OPJ: +18.8 net rating (117.2 ORTG) in 32 minutes.
Curry/Iguodala/Bjelica: +57.1 net rating (146.8 ORTG) in 28 minutes.
Curry/GPII/Bjelica: +67.7 net rating (153.4 ORTG) in 25 minutes.
GPII/Green/Bjelica: -19 net rating (92.7 ORTG) in 24 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Bjelica: -35.8 net rating (73.6 ORTG) in 24 minutes.
GPII/Iguodala/OPJ: +31.3 net rating (137.8 ORTG) in 22 minutes.
Curry/Lee/Iguodala: +11.5 net rating (93.3 ORTG) in 22 minutes.
Curry/Iguodala/Kuminga: +30.3 net rating (111.1 ORTG) in 21 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Green: -46.7 net rating (77.8 ORTG) in 21 minutes.
Poole/Green/Bjelica: -34.7 net rating (79.6 ORTG) in 21 minutes.
The numbers here line up with what we saw in the five-man combos: variants of the starters were excellent this week and pretty much any combo that played significant minutes without Steph Curry struggled. The high net rating of GPII/Iguodala/Bjelica is interesting — that combo has closed halves alongside Steph Curry and Draymond Green and done quite well (+44 net rating in 14 possessions this season), but swap Jordan Poole for Steph Curry and things fall apart.
Poole/Wiggins: +5.1 net rating (116.1 ORTG) in 104 minutes
Wiggins/Green: +4.3 net rating (114.5 ORTG) in 99 minutes.
Poole/Green: -1.8 net rating (112.3 ORTG) in 97 minutes.
Wiggins/Looney: +11.1 net rating (117.8 ORTG) in 86 minutes.
Curry/Wiggins: +23.2 net rating (123.8 ORTG) in 85 minutes.
Curry/Green: +29.9 net rating (127 ORTG) in 78 minutes.
Poole/Looney: +9.9 net rating (120.7 ORTG) in 77 minutes.
Curry/Poole: +20.9 net rating (128.1 ORTG) in 76 minutes.
Curry/Looney: +16.4 net rating (121.1 ORTG) in 71 minutes.
Green/Looney: +6.7 net rating (117.3 ORTG) in 70 minutes.
Curry/Iguodala: +36.1 net rating (121.1 ORTG) in 69 minutes.
GPII/Iguodala: +32.6 net rating (119 ORTG) in 53 minutes.
GPII/Bjelica: +19.1 net rating (116.4 ORTG) in 50 minutes.
Curry/GPII: +54.2 net rating (134 ORTG) in 47 minutes.
Iguodala/Bjelica: +33.5 net rating (129.9 ORTG) in 39 minutes.
Iguodala/OPJ: +13.9 net rating (112.7 ORTG) in 39 minutes.
Curry/OPJ: +18.6 net rating (118.6 ORTG) in 34 minutes.
GPII/Green: +5.5 net rating (97.2 ORTG) in 32 minutes.
Curry/Bjelica: +62.5 net rating (146.6 ORTG) in 31 minutes.
Poole/Bjelica: -13.3 net rating (88.2 ORTG) in 30 minutes.
Steph Curry is not involved in any of the four most-used two-man combos from the past week. I’d suspect this is because Curry’s minutes were dispersed throughout all four quarters with a variety of different players. Curry combos with any of Iguodala, GPII, or Bjelica had net ratings in excess of +30 — this nearly holds true over the entire season as well, but Curry/Iguodala narrowly misses the >+30 net rating threshold with a mere +29.1 net rating. Over the last week, the GPII/Iguodala and Iguodala/Bjelica net ratings were also in excess of >+30, which is remarkable because Iguodala also played 28 minutes alongside Jordan Poole and 9 of those minutes that occurred with GPII/Bjelica had a net rating -39.3 with a 75 ORTG. To that point, you can see the Poole/Bjelica combo had a brutal 88.2 ORTG in its 30 minutes this week.
POOLE WATCH BABY!!!
Jordan Poole underwhelmed in the past week as the Warriors went 3-1. It seems that Poole’s offensive explosion from the week prior had the unfortunate effect of encouraging him to tweak his shot profile to take way more three-point shots at the expense of looks at the hoop. Over the last week, 65% of Poole’s shot came from deep and he shot... 23.7% from three in the last four games, but even before this most recent week, 51% of his shots had been from the three-point line, which was still quite high.
What should be obvious to anyone watching the Warriors is that Jordan Poole is shooting too much from deep and taking a couple of needlessly difficult attempts every night. Those difficult shots... simply don’t need to be taken.
Poole is shooting a perfectly healthy 38.2% on wide-open threes on 4.2 attempts per game but that number drops to 22.5% on 3.1 attempts on open threes. Poole only takes 0.8 threes per game that are tightly defended, per NBA.com, but those are going in at a 27.3% rate. When Poole pulls up from three, which he does twice a game, he’s only shooting them at a 25% clip while catch-and-shoot threes are going in at a 33.3% rate. What we can safely infer from these numbers is that Poole the wide-open catch-and-shoot attempts are fine, but for some reason, the merely open ones aren’t going in at a similar clip while almost every pull-up 3 he takes is an unnecessary adventure.
There’s no reason Jordan Poole can’t re-adjust his shot profile to take more shots at the rim again, but Poole should feel a sense of urgency to get things right before defenses start daring him to fire even more from deep. Right now, Poole is shooting an elite 71.1% from the restricted area — he should absolutely make it a point to attack the hoop more but if he solidifies a reputation as an unreliable shooter because he’s taking exceedingly difficult shots, he’ll close up the very driving lanes he needs to be a well-rounded scorer.
This three, from the third quarter of Sunday night’s game against the Hornets, is one I don’t mind. Gary Payton II pushes the ball in transition after stealing the ball and Poole flares out to the right wing and takes a rhythm three off the GPII pass. An open shot is an open shot and there is something to be said for the emotional potency of points off turnovers, especially ones that come in particularly demoralizing fashion, like a fastbreak three.
But then there are shots like this one that occurred early in the fourth quarter against the Minnesota Timberwolves, where Poole pump fakes Jaden McDaniels before taking a pull-up three. Note also how wide-open Nemanja Bjelica and Otto Porter Jr. are here.
The Warriors need Poole to be threatening from deep but he can only really put the Fear of God in teams if he’s taking shots that teams reasonably fear. There’s an argument to be made that the Warriors would have won their game yesterday against the Hornets if Poole had provided any offensive utility beyond his role as a theoretical floor spacer — the three 5-man lineups that played >3 or more minutes without Curry had ORTG’s of 55.6, 16.7 and 83.3 — and given Steve Kerr a reason to play him in crunch time instead of Kevon Looney, Andre Iguodala, or Gary Payton II. Instead, Poole took just four shots inside the arc last night and as he got colder from deep, he started making dumb turnovers and played himself out of consideration for closing minutes.
What makes Poole’s backslide frustrating is that he’d made the necessary adjustments to attack the rim earlier in the year when he was very cold from deep. Hell, NBCS, who really only exists to publish Raymond Ridder approved propaganda, highlighted Poole’s rim penetration when Steve Kerr praised him for it after the Warriors’ blowout of the Houston Rockets. Some of last week’s unfortunately skewed shot profile might just be attributed to Poole struggling to dribble in the presence of Alex Caruso and Anthony Edwards in consecutive games — Poole looked fine attacking the rim against the Hawks — but the Hornets were are hardly a defensive juggernaut. Poole shouldn’t need bad shooting from deep as an excuse to aggressively attack the rim and hopefully his recent struggles as a high volume three-point shooter make him reconsider his shot profile and uh... not do this.
Jordan Poole’s stats last week
11/8 vs. the Hawks: 16 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, and 0 turnovers on 6/17 FG, 3/10 3P, and 1/1 FT attempts in 31:39 minutes.
11/10 vs. the Timberwolves: 14 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, and 1 turnover on 5/17 FG, 2/11 3P, and 2/2 FT in 36:56 minutes
11/12 vs. the Bulls: 14 points, 1 rebound, 2 assists, 3 steals, and 4 turnovers on 5/12 FG, 2/9 3P, and 2/2 FT in 31:47 minutes
11/14 vs. the Hornets: 14 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, and 1 turnover on 5/17 FG, 2/11 3P, and 2/2 FT in 36:56 minutes.
Through nine games this season, Jordan Poole is averaging 17.2 points, 2.6 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.2 blocks, and 2.4 turnovers per game on 43/31/96 splits in 29.7 minutes a game.
Here’s a visual representation of Poole’s shot chart this season, courtesy of Positive Residual:
Assorted notes
I’m going to use bullet points here to put together some stray thoughts:
Jonathan Kuminga seems primed for consistent rotation minutes after back-to-back performances where he was a plus defensively against quality offensive players like DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, LaMelo Ball, and Miles Bridges. Steve Kerr said that Kuminga had “a chance to be special defensively,” Draymond Green said that the rookie has “everything you want in a defender,” and Steph Curry said that in practice, Kuminga has blocked him “a bunch of times from the perimeter.” Seems good! I have a bunch of Kuminga defensive film from the Hornets game that you can see here, but you can safely assume that Kuminga will offer more defensive highlights in the near future as Kerr has all but given the rookie a rotation spot over Juan Toscano-Anderson.
The last time that Juan Toscano-Anderson played significant minutes, the Warriors let the Minnesota Timberwolves back into the game in the third quarter. In his very first possession of the game — he hadn’t played a single minute until that point — he threw the ball away after slipping a DHO. Shortly after, he got burned on a smart pass fake by Jared Vanderbilt that got D’Angelo Russell an open three from the right wing. In 12 games, Juan has the Warriors’ worst DFG differential as opponents shoot +12.3% from the field relative to their expected FG% on shots he defends. Some of that feels like bad luck — recall LeBron James becoming Michael Jordan in the post against Juan — but so long as Kuminga keeps playing solid D, you should expect that JTA loses minutes at his expense.
The emergence of Jonathan Kuminga as a viable defender is remarkable, given that most rookies struggle to defend, but it also complicates rotation building for Steve Kerr, especially as James Wiseman nears a return from his torn meniscus. The Athletic’s Anthony Slater has predicted that the Warriors will try to keep Wiseman minutes separated from the Steph Curry/Draymond Green pairing whenever possible. How then, is that possible if Curry is only sitting out for stints of three or four minutes at a time? Does Wiseman come in during the first quarter when Curry comes out? Does Steve Kerr then sit Curry the final minutes of the quarter and sub in Gary Payton II only alongside Curry but not alongside Wiseman as not to cramp the Warriors’ spacing? Are Jonathan Kuminga and Gary Payton II expected to play alongside each other with Steph Curry in the second unit now or does Steve Kerr go back to a Jordan Poole-led unit to start the second quarter? What becomes of the GPII/Bjelica pairing? You get the picture.
Speaking of Nemanja Bjelica, he’s now shooting an incendiary 46.7% from deep this year on 5.5 attempts per 36 minutes. This is great, but my Twitter feed is still filled with complaints about Bjelica passing up open shots from deep to drive to the hoop. If those drives are frustrating you, it’s probably because Bjelica has the second-highest TOV% of any player in the NBA on drives (17.5%) amongst those playing >15 minutes a game and driving to the hoop >3 times a game. Only 2.5% of Bjelica’s drives are ending on assists, despite him passing the ball 45% of the time that he drives. Bjelica passing up open threes to drive and force the defense to rotate can be useful, especially when Steph Curry is on the court, but it’s probably not more useful than a 3 Bjelica three in non-Steph minutes, especially if Steve Kerr continues to give Poole/GPII/Green/Bjelica with either Iguodala or Wiggins significant run.
Steph Curry is still only shooting 29.4% from three on open threes, which account for 6.5 of his 12.9 3PA per game, but he’s up to 39% on 3.1 attempts on wide-open threes. Both of those numbers can and should increase. Steph is also up to 62% from the restricted area, which is more in line with his career percentages from that zone. Another encouraging note: Steph Curry has the 4th highest points-per-possession in isolation, 1.33 PPP of players ISO’ing > once a game. I’d like more of that please!
What does this next week have in store for the Warriors?
The Warriors will have their toughest stretch of games so far this season. On Tuesday night, they play the Brooklyn Nets (10-4 record) on the road. Two nights later, they’ll play the 9-5 Cleveland Cavaliers, before having a soft end to the road trip with a Friday night game against the 3-9 Detroit Pistons. The Warriors will then fly home for a Sunday night game against the Toronto Raptors (7-7 record).
My prediction for this week
The Warriors will go 2-2.
The Brooklyn Nets crushed the Warriors in two games last season and I expect that they’ll run the Warriors off of the court on Tuesday night, due to their familiarity with the Warriors’ system and Kevin Durant’s disdain for Steve Kerr. The Warriors should match up well with a surprisingly good Cleveland Cavaliers team who are winning games in spite of, or perhaps, because of a bizarre frontcourt of Lauri Markkanen/Evan Mobley/Jarrett Allen. The Cavs are a good defensive, but I don’t imagine they’ll put enough points to beat the Warriors in a defensive battle and the Warriors should follow up that victory with another one against the lowly Pistons, who are a young and terrible shooting team. The Warriors will then drop a game to the Toronto Raptors, who have the type of long-armed defenders to give the Warriors hell and swallow up their motion offense.