Warriors week-in-review: 3/13 - 3/20
The Warriors' new reality without Steph Curry, Jordan Poole's ascension, Andrew Wiggins' regression, and more.
Who is on the injury report?
Steph Curry is out “indefinitely” with a foot sprain after Marcus Smart crashed into his legs diving for a loose ball. Curry wore a walking boot on the bench during Sunday night’s game but said in a pregame press conference that he believes that he should return before the beginning of the playoffs.
James Wiseman has had yet another setback in his return from a torn meniscus and was held out of what should have been his fourth G-League game of the season after his surgically repaired knee swelled up. Wiseman’s status is “beyond uncertain,” per The Athletic’s Anthony Slater. With only 11 games left before the playoffs, it seems unlikely the second-year center plays a single meaningful minute of basketball for the Warriors this season.
Moses Moody missed Sunday night’s game with right shoulder soreness related to a boxout in Wednesday night’s game that caused him to miss the entire second half of the game. His injury appears unserious and he will hopefully return to action during the Warriors’ road trip this week.
Gary Payton II has missed the Warriors’ last 8 games, although Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes reported that GPII wanted to target Sunday night’s game for a potential return to action.
Draymond Green returned to the Warriors and played his first games in more than two months after recovering from a lower back injury. Green was initially on a minutes’ limit and did not start on Monday or Wednesday night’s game, but his minutes were set to increase on Sunday night prior to his ejection early in the third quarter.
Otto Porter Jr. returned to action on Monday night’s game after missing four games in a row.
Nemanja Bjelica and Andrew Wiggins both missed games this week with a non-COVID illness, but both players were in the lineup on Sunday night’s game.
Who did the Warriors play this?
The Warriors played three games at home against the Washington Wizards, the Boston Celtics, and the San Antonio Spurs.
How did they do?
The Warriors went 1-2.
How did that happen?
The Warriors got an easy 126-112 win on Monday night against a Wizards team missing their best player and Draymond Green played his first game with Klay Thompson and Steph Curry in over 1,000 days. In order to make the most out of Green’s minutes’ restriction, Steve Kerr brought him off of the bench — this was the first time that Green hadn’t started since the Warriors’ heated first-round series against the Clippers in the 2014 playoffs. Jordan Poole and Jonathan Kuminga started alongside Curry, Thompson, and Kevon Looney and the Warriors pushed the pace early in the first quarter. Draymond Green entered the game at the 5:37 mark of the first quarter and soon after, assisted Steph Curry on a nostalgic split action set:
The return of Draymond Green and Steph Curry’s old substitution patterns gave Jordan Poole a chance to lead a reconfigured second unit at the start of the second quarter. In four minutes without Steph Curry, Jordan Poole scored 9 straight points in increasingly dramatic fashion. In those minutes, he shared the court with Klay Thompson, Otto Porter Jr., and Nemanja Bjelica — a potent group of supplementary shooting while Draymond Green shared the court with Poole for the first two minutes of the quarter and then subbed out for Jonathan Kuminga. Poole subbed out of the game at the 8-minute mark and then returned at the 5:09 mark. About two minutes later, Klay Thompson checked in and Steph Curry, Thompson, and Draymond Green graced the court together for the first time since game 6 of the 2019 Finals.
This possession, which began with staggered screens for Steph Curry set by Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney, was particularly glorious:
After a lethargic start to the third quarter, Steph Curry scored 12 points in the final 4:33 of the period, which set the stage for an explosive fourth quarter that put the game away. Steph Curry subbed back into the game at the 7:20 mark of the fourth quarter, but in the previous minutes, the Warriors didn’t score a single field goal, and that drought extended until; the 5:08 mark of the period when Curry made a layup. Curry proceeded to score the next 11 points for the Warriors to push his scoring total up to 47 and after he missed a three-pointer that would have garnered him his 50th points of the night, Steve Kerr pulled his starters with about two minutes left and induced garbage time.
Two nights later, the Warriors' season turned on its head during a 110-88 loss to the Boston Celtics in which Steph Curry came out of the game in the third quarter after Marcus Smart dove into his legs diving after a loose ball. Not even 10 seconds later, Smart nearly kicked Klay Thompson in the face attempting to contest a layup. You can see both of those plays below.
As you’d imagine, the Warriors’ coaching staff was furious about Smart’s reckless plays and the cameras spent a long time watching Steve Kerr lecture Marcus Smart at the next dead ball. But Smart’s conduct was merely the shit cherry on top of a very frustrating night of basketball. When Steph Curry came out of the game in the second quarter, he had four turnovers against three points on four shot attempts. The Celtics’ defense, which had already clicked prior to the All-Star break and has only gotten better with the trade deadline addition of Derick White, absolutely smothered the Warriors’ offense. This play from early in the first quarter demonstrates just how airtight the Celtics’ defense was, particularly off-ball:
Even when it looked like the Warriors had unshackled themselves from the Celtics’ perimeter defense, their interior defenders erased mistakes. This block of a Jordan Poole layup by Robert Williams II shushed the Warriors’ crowd:
The Warriors, to their credit, kept up with the Celtics on defense, but after Curry came out of the game, they looked deflated and utterly fell apart in the closing minutes of the first half. Coming into the third quarter, the Warriors trailed by 16 points, which is half as many points as they scored in the entire first half. Oof. The Warriors trailed by as many as 21 points in the third quarter until Jordan Poole took over and made a game out of it. For the first few minutes of the period, Poole probed the Celtics’ defense patiently and set up his teammates for open shots that they happened to miss. You can see some of those plays below:
After the final missed three in that clip by Otto Porter Jr., Poole proceeded to score 16 points and assists on another four points in the period. Poole’s aggression on offense was pretty much the only thing that worked against the stingy Celtics’ defense the entire night and by the end of the period, the Warriors only trailed by 10 points. But of course, Poole had to sit eventually and so the Warriors were forced to turn the keys to Chris Chiozza for meaningful fourth-quarter minutes. The Warriors survived those three minutes without Poole but ran out of steam shortly after and waved the white flag with 3:05 left in the game and pulled their starters.
On Sunday night, the Warriors lost their second game in a row, this one in confusing and incredibly frustrating fashion against a Spurs team who were 3-7 in their last 10 games. The injury of Steph Curry gave Jordan Poole primary ball-handling responsibilities and rushed Draymond Green’s return to the starting lineup, which is to be expected. At the very least, the unfortunate injury to Curry could provide some intrigue about Poole’s fit next to the Thompson and Green duo, but the starting lineup came out flat, and when Chris Chiozza checked in — alongside Jordan Poole for some reason — around the four-minute mark of the opening period, the Warriors had scored uh... just 10 points. Yikes.
The Warriors trailed by 14 points to start the second quarter, at which the keys were given to Chris Chiozza. Steve Kerr’s decision to play Chiozza in the first quarter
over Damion Lee or literally, any other Warrior, meant that the two-way guard played 10 straight minutes. The Warriors were +4 in Chiozza’s minutes, but the bulk of the good shots generated in the non-Poole minutes came from a mini-Klay Thompson explosion. Some of the offensive possessions during these minutes defied logic, such as this split action for Nemanja Bjelica and Chris Chiozza that was rescued by Jonathan Kuminga’s bruising post play:
Later in the period, Jordan Poole checked back in with about 6 minutes left in the period and the Warriors got within three points of the Spurs, but a tough buzzer-beater by Devin Vassell at the end of the period put the Warriors down 6 points going into halftime.
Around the 7-minute mark of the third quarter, Draymond Green picked up his fourth foul of the game and got a technical from official, Marat Kogut. Only a possession later, Green, unable to stop himself from scratching the itch, kept pestering Kogut and picked up his second technical foul of the night. The Warriors trailed by 6 points at the time of Green’s ejection but managed to take their first lead of the game in the final seconds of the period. Otto Porter Jr., who finished the game with 16 points and 16 rebounds, was huge in the third quarter in Green’s absence.
The Warriors lost their lead only a few minutes into the fourth quarter and to give you a sense of foreshadowing, Klay Thompson asked Steve Kerr to review a shooting foul he’d received closing out on Josh Richardson’s three-point shot, only for that review to yield a flagrant foul on Thompson. It was that type of night for the Warriors, but Steve Kerr didn’t exactly help the Warriors’ case by leaving Chris Chiozza in the game for two very consequential minutes fourth-quarter alongside Jordan Poole. In the span of those two minutes, the Warriors were -8 and the Spurs picked on Chiozza repeatedly on defense, to great success.
The Warriors got themselves in a position to lose Sunday’s game in heartbreaking fashion because Jordan Poole scored or assisted on 11 of the Warriors’ last 16 points of the game to get the game down to a matter of possessions. Andrew Wiggins scored five of the Warriors’ final points of the game, but he was also uniquely responsible for the slow-motion trainwreck that was the final three seconds of the game. Because words cannot fully do this disaster justice, here’s some video:
In the above video, the game is tied with less than 10 seconds left and Spurs are called for a foul, for some reason, on Andrew Wiggins. This might have seemed like a good thing for the Warriors, but given Wiggins’ recent struggles at the free-throw line, it was not. Wiggins made his first free throw and then this happened:
Jakob Poetl then proceeded to split his free-throws and give the Spurs an improbable win on this chaotic sequence:
Joy.
What lineups played lots of minutes this week?
First, some housecleaning: it’s been over a month since I’ve done one of these posts and in that time, league-average ORTG has raised a full percentage point to 111.4, which is the second-highest ORTG in NBA league history. 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 (lineups highlighted in green are positive):
Curry/Poole/Thompson/Kuminga/Looney: -7.1 net rating (92.9 ORTG) in 12 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Looney: -9.1 net rating (109.1 ORTG) in 11 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/OPJ/Green/Looney: -46.7 net rating (100 ORTG) in 8 minutes.
Chiozza/Thompson/OPJ/Kuminga/Bjelica: -7.1 net rating (100 ORTG) in 7 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ/Looney: -107.7 net rating (53.8 ORT) in 6 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/OPJ/Kuminga/Bjelica: -27.3 net rating (136.4 ORTG) in 6 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Thompson/Green/Looney: +61.5 net rating (161.5 ORTG) in 6 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/OPJ/Green/Bjelica: +0.0 net rating (100 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Thompson/OPJ/Looney: -25.8 net rating (90.9 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Curry/Moody/OPJ/Green/Bjelica: +90 net rating (220 ORTG) in 5 minutes.
Poole/Weatherspoon/Lee/JTA/Kuminga: +50 net rating (130 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ/Green: -21.4 net rating (150 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Poole/Moody/Thompson/Kuminga/Looney: -33.3 net rating (50 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Chiozza/Thompson/Kuminga/Green/Bjelica: +39.3 net rating (125 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
Curry/Moody/Thompson/Kuminga/Bjelica: -42.9 net rating (100 ORTG) in 4 minutes.
This is a pretty ugly list. Only one of the Warriors’ five-man lineups to play more than five minutes this week came up positive — Curry/Poole/Thompson/Green/Looney — and that was a lineup we will not see again until Curry is healthy. This sucks. In the 6 minutes that lineup played together, they looked like a killer closing lineup — mind you, against the lowly Washington Wizards — but it was going to be a joy to see Steph Curry, Jordan Poole, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green play together while Steve Kerr decided who would be the optimal fifth player to share the court with them. Every other Curry-led lineup in this list came up negative. The top lineup, Curry/Poole/Thompson/Kuminga/Looney, was a lineup that I’ve seen Warriors fans clamor for on Twitter, but it didn’t play a single minute together prior to Wednesday night’s demoralizing loss to the Celtics. The end of the season should have provided valuable opportunities for combos like that to acclimate to one another, but that’s now out of the question.
Because of Steph Curry and Moses Moody’s injuries and Andrew Wiggins’ Sunday night return, the Warriors’ rotation has been in some very obvious flux. As a result of that flux, every single one of these lineups listed above only played one game together this week. Not a single five-man lineup to play for the Warriors during this past week played two games together. That lack of continuity is something we should expect moving forward. Moses Moody, Gary Payton II, and Andre Iguodala should return for the Warriors sooner rather than later, at which point you’ll likely see even more unfamiliar player combinations.
Here are the Warriors’ non-garbage time three-man combos that played at least 20 minutes in the past week:
Poole/Thompson/Looney: -20.2 net rating (100.9 ORTG) in 54 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/OPJ: -38.4 net rating (97.8 ORTG) in 44 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Green: -21 net rating (108.2 ORTG) in 39 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Kuminga: -16.1 net rating (101.7 ORTG) in 27 minutes.
Poole/Green/Looney: +5.5 net rating (121.8 ORTG) in 26 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Wiggins: -25.6 net rating (101.9 ORTG) in 25 minutes.
Thompson/Green/Looney: +2.2 net rating (119.2 ORTG) in 25 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Looney: +18.9 net rating (117.2 ORTG) in 25 minutes.
Thompson/OPJ/Looney: -46.2 net rating (81.3 ORTG) in 24 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Thompson: +1.9 net rating (103.6 ORTG) in 24 minutes.
Curry/Thompson/Looney: +7.4 net rating (107.4 ORTG) in 24 minutes.
Thompson/OPJ/Green: -34.3 net rating (94 ORTG) in 22 minutes.
Thompson/Kuminga/Bjelica: -23.9 net rating (113.3 ORTG) in 22 minutes.
Thompson/OPJ/Bjelica: -8.9 net rating (100 ORTG) in 22 minutes.
Poole/OPJ/Looney: -55.7 net rating (82.6 ORTG) in 21 minutes.
OPJ/Kuminga/Bjelica: +10.4 net rating (117.5 ORTG) in 21 minutes.
Poole/OPJ/Bjelica: +11.1 net rating (115.9 ORTG) in 20 minutes.
This list is also quite gruesome! Variants of the starting lineup with Jordan Poole in place of Steph Curry were pretty bad this past week, although it is encouraging to see the Green/Looney frontcourt come up positive in its minutes with Jordan Poole. Of the 6 combos to have an above-average ORTG this past week, three of them include Nemanja Bjelica. I am most intrigued by the success of the OPJ/Kuminga/Bjelica trio as one can imagine them as a second-unit complement to Jordan Poole and Klay Thompson, assuming Steph Curry returns healthy and in time for the playoffs.
Here are the Warriors’ two-man combos that played at least 30 minutes together this past week:
Poole/Thompson: -24 net rating (102.3 ORTG) in 82 minutes.
Poole/Looney: -9.5 net rating (107.3 ORTG) in 59 minutes.
Thompson/Looney: -14.9 net rating (99.1 ORTG) in 57 minutes.
Thompson/OPJ: -28.9 net rating (94.8 ORTG) in 55 minutes.
Poole/OPJ: -25.3 net rating (101.9 ORTG) in 51 minutes.
Thompson/Green: -17.3 net rating (102.9 ORTG) in 48 minutes.
Poole/Kuminga: +13.7 net rating (113.7 ORTG) in 45 minutes.
Thompson/Kuminga: -18.9 net rating (98.9 ORTG) in 45 minutes.
Poole/Green: -13.4 net rating (107.5 ORTG) in 43 minutes.
OPJ/Bjelica: +17.4 net rating (123 ORTG) in 36 minutes.
Kuminga/Bjelica: +5.2 net rating (117.2 ORTG) in 34 minutes.
Curry/Looney: +11 net rating (111 ORTG) in 33 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins: -3.4 net rating (106 ORTG) in 32 minutes.
Curry/Thompson: -11.1 net rating (93.1 ORTG) in 32 minutes.
Thompson/Bjelica: -16.1 net rating (103 ORTG) in 31 minutes.
OPJ/Looney: -42.1 net rating (81 ORTG) in 31 minutes.
Green/Looney: +14.3 net rating (123.8 ORTG) in 30 minutes.
OPJ/Green: -6.8 net rating (121.5 ORTG) in 30 minutes.
Again, this list of combos is not all that encouraging either. The brutal numbers of the Poole/Thompson combo are jarring, but here’s some encouraging context; that combo has a +7.7 net rating on the season, despite the fact that they have played a significant amount of time — 363 possessions per Cleaning the Glass — without Steph Curry and mostly in second units. Some further context; the Poole/Thompson duo is only the Warriors’ 40th most-used duo this year — even Curry/Iguodala has played more minutes together, despite Iguodala only playing in 8 games since the start of 2022. Curry’s unfortunate injury means that the Poole/Thompson duo will have to spend more time together. If any good should come out of Curry’s absence, it will hopefully be increased comfort between Poole and Thompson and other similar combos.
POOLE WATCH BABY!!!
My recurring “POOLE WATCH BABY!!!” segments turned into Klay Thompson and then Draymond Green segments upon their respective return from injury, but the recent and excellent play of Jordan Poole deserves some recognition so here I am, going back to my roots and writing about Jordan Poole.
In the month of March, Poole is averaging 23.8 points a game, 4.2 assists, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.4 stocks a game on 56/49/86 shooting splits, which recalls a less developed, but similarly impressive March from Poole last season where he scored 18.5 points a game on 49/39/91 shooting splits after returning from his G-League exile. Since being pushed into the starting lineup against the Milwaukee Bucks, Poole is averaging 26.8 points a game, 3.5 assists, 3.8 rebounds, and 1.8 stocks a game on 53/44/85 shooting splits. Poole has been around long enough for us to know that he is a streaky player, so the gaudy shooting splits won’t last, but I’m curious to see how Poole responds as he comes back down to earth.
Prior to the Warriors’ game against the Spurs, Steve Kerr had high praise for Poole: “His last few games have been his best in terms of his aggressiveness without dominating the ball. We’ve been preaching that to him — the point-five mentality, making the decision quickly because that impacts the next action. There haven’t really been many plays where he’s pounded his dribble, danced on a play instead of making a definitive cut.” I think that Poole’s performance against the Celtics in the third quarter demonstrated the young guard’s ability to oscillate between setting up his teammates and hunting his own shots. I linked to this video earlier in this post, but I want to repost it now:
I’d suspect that the gruesome numbers of the Poole/Thompson and Poole/OPJ duos from this past week have something to do with this Celtics’ game, and perhaps, this third quarter where both Thompson and OPJ missed some of the easiest looks they got all night. Those looks should go down eventually and I’m sure that Steve Kerr felt some comfort knowing that Jordan Poole made an obvious effort to get his teammates going before taking matters into his own hands and getting the Warriors back into the game.
It’s been so long since I’ve written specifically about Jordan Poole in this space that the last time I looked long and hard at his tracking/shooting numbers was January 3rd. On that date, Poole was shooting a holy 73.9% in the restricted area and had taken 38 mid-range jumpers all season to the tune of 47.4% accuracy. Poole’s finishing is now merely elite at 67.8% but in the past two months, he went from over half of his makes in the restricted area being assisted to 52.6% of his RA makes being unassisted on the entire season. Poole’s mid-range accuracy has stayed mostly the same on higher volume — he’s shooting 46.7% on 90 attempts and 54.8% of his mid-range makes have been unassisted.
Some other stats of note:
Poole is shooting 45% from the right corner but only 29.2% from the left on 40 and 48 attempts respectively. His above-the-break three-point shooting is now up to 36.1%, which is 0.9 points above league-average three-point percentage.
On January 3rd, Poole was shooting 34.6% on above-the-break threes on 179 attempts. Poole has taken an additional 184 above-the-break threes since then and his unassisted makes now account for 32.1% of his made above-the-break threes as opposed to 19.4% on January 3rd. Put into simpler language: Poole had only made 12 unassisted three-pointers on January 3rd and in the next 9 or so weeks, he’s made 30 of them, which means that over half of Poole’s above-the-break threes have been unassisted since January 3rd. That seems good!
Jordan Poole ranks 25th in the entire NBA on 2P% with 57%. Only one guard ranks higher, Duncan Robinson, who is shooting 57.1% on 2P FG’s but has only taken 98 2P FG against Poole’s 386 attempts. That’s 4.3 percentage points higher than Steph Curry’s 51st rank, improbably.
Jordan Poole’s stats this past week:
3/14 vs. WAS: 20 points, 3 assists, 2 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 block, and 2 turnovers on 7/13 FG, 1/4 3P, and 5/7 FT’s in 32:29 minutes.
3/16 vs. BOS: 29 points, 3 assists, 2 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 block, and 0 turnovers on 10/20 FG, 6/13 3P, and 3/4 FT’s in 34:26 minutes.
3/20 vs. SAS: 28 points, 3 assists, 5 rebounds, 0 steals or blocks, and 3 turnovers on 11/21 FG, 4/9 3P, and 2/2 FT’s in 36:17 minutes.
Here is a visualization of Poole’s shot chart for the season, courtesy of Positive Residual:
Assorted notes
I’m going to use bullet points here to put together some stray thoughts:
Steph Curry’s extended absence is going to test the Warriors’ ability to generate efficient offense. Jordan Poole has been playing quite well since before Curry’s injury, but there isn’t really any long-term sample size that shows Steve Kerr’s offense producing league-average offense without Steph Curry in the non-Kevin Durant era of his coaching tenure. In Curry’s absence, we’ll probably see a lot of the Poole/Thompson duo. That duo, as stated above earlier, has played 363 possessions together without Steph Curry. I’ve provided a screenshot of those lineups that have played at least 10 possessions together where the lineups highlighted in green are positive.
Improbably, the Warriors have played more possessions without either of Steph Curry or Jordan Poole on the court than they have the Poole/Thompson duo without Steph Curry. Below is a screenshot of non-Curry/Poole lineups to have played more than 10 possessions together this season. You’ll note that there’s far less continuity in these lineup combos than there is the Poole/Thompson and no Curry lineups and that every single one of these lineups includes one of Chris Chiozza or Andre Iguodala.
Until Iguodala returns from injury, I’d expect that we keep seeing Chiozza minutes. I do not necessarily fault Steve Kerr for this even though I might prefer trying to cobble together a defense-first lineup if Chiozza-led lineups are going to be punchless on offense. What choice does Steve Kerr have when Jordan Poole sits? Are you going to put the ball in the hands of Juan Toscano-Anderson or Draymond Green to do point-forward stuff while defenses sag off of them? Do you trust Moses Moody or Jonathan Kuminga or Damion Lee to initiate offense? Andrew Wiggins has had some reps as the lead-ball in bench units before, but given Wiggins’ recent struggles, do you really want that?
So just how bad has Wiggins been recently? Since the All-Star break, Wiggins is averaging 14.3 points a game on 40/30/44 shooting splits. Since being named an All-Star starter on January 28, those shooting splits are 43/36/51. Since the return of Klay Thompson on January 9, those shooting splits are... 44/37/51. We’re basically looking at two months of Andrew Wiggins regressing to the player Warriors fans feared they had traded for, with terrible free-throw shooting to boot. Prior to the return of Thompson, Wiggins was averaging 19.1 points a game on 49/42/69 shooting splits and had scored 20+ points in 13 different games but he’s gone for 20 or more points just four times since the return of Thompson.
I think it’s ridiculous to pin Wiggins’ struggles on Thompson as so many of the worst people on Warriors’ Twitter seem happy to do. The reality of Andrew Wiggins is that he’s always been an inconsistent and regression-prone player who needs to be pushed to become the best version of himself. If the arrival of Klay Thompson and the oodles of floor spacing he provides for drivers — or say, one of the most athletic wings in the entire NBA like Wiggins — makes you more passive, that’s not Thompson’s fault.
I suspect — incorrectly, as it turns out — that Wiggins might be driving less since the return of Klay Thompson, or perhaps, his All-Star starter announcement/All-Star break. The numbers don’t bear that out. Wiggins is actually driving more and taking more field goal attempts on drives than he did pre-Klay Thompson since the All-Star break.
But... my hunch wasn’t entirely off. Prior to Klay Thompson’s return, Andrew Wiggins was taking 3.85 shots a game in the restricted area. Since January 9, that number has plummeted to 2.06 shots a game. That, is frankly, unacceptable. It’s entirely possible that Wiggins has been even more reluctant to take shots in the restricted area since his free-throw regression began, but that isn’t a problem with an easy solution.
The Chris Chiozza experience is one that I find so absolutely miserable (he has the second-worst efficiency differential AKA +/- on the team with -10.3, worsted only by Moses Moody’s -15) that I might actually prefer Steve Kerr throw Andrew Wiggins a bone in the next few games and put the ball in his hands in a spread floor situation when Jordan Poole sits. As bad as Wiggins has been recently, he has always been a more engaged player on offense when the ball is in his hands. In theory, surrounding him with shooters like Klay Thompson, Moses Moody, Otto Porter Jr., and Nemanja Bjelica, might coerce Wiggins into getting downhill. At the very least, a Wiggins/Moody/Thompson/OPJ/Bjelica lineup is unlikely to be worse on offense or defense than any bench combination led by Chris Chiozza.
What does this next week have in store for the Warriors?
The Warriors a road back-to-back with the Orlando Magic (19-53 record) and Miami Heat (47-24 record) on Tuesday and Wednesday night, play the Atlanta Hawks (35-36 record) on Friday and then play the Washington Wizards (30-40 record) on Sunday night.
I will be at the Warriors’ game against the Wizards as a belated birthday treat. Luck being what it is, those tickets were purchased back in November when the Wizards had a good record and this looked to be a competitive game. Since then, the Wizards have (predictably) bottomed out and Steph Curry is now out for the indefinite future and so it shall be that I will not have seen Steph Curry play in person since the year 2014. Alas.
My prediction for this week:
The Warriors will beat the Magic, lose to the Heat and Hawks, and then beat the Wizards.