What does this season mean, really?
A thin margin for error, the obvious need for league average shooting and grown ass men, the Kelly Oubre/Andrew Wiggins pregame coin flip, and a brief overview of the offseason dilemma.
I’d written every word up of my previous posts before the Warriors got humiliated by the Mavericks last night. Now, my final sentence in the previous post — “I live in fear of a cold Steph night during a play-in game coupled with a mediocre game from Oubre and/or Wiggins,” — feels prophetic. I really do not trust this Warriors team in a play-in game. This Warriors team is as capable of riding a hot Steph night against pretty much any team in the league as they are laying a huge egg, which is exactly what happened against the Mavericks.
What I found most frustrating about last night’s game was that it showed how thin the margin of error is for this iteration of the Warriors. Steph wasn’t all that aggressive in the first half and when the rest of the team receded into their own sphincters, the game ended in a matter of minutes. This was probably the most dramatic version of a worst-case scenario for this Warriors team — they simply cannot survive a game where the entire team goes cold even for a brief stretch. Because Steph Curry is really the only consistent scorer on this team, that’s not an improbable scenario.
If I have one overarching takeaway from this Warriors season it is this: I don’t think the Warriors don’t necessarily need another superstar to contend, they simply need consistent league average performances from the surrounding cast to have a chance in any playoff series, provided that Steph Curry is playing well. The sky isn’t falling, not entirely! But it is still disturbing that the Warriors struggle to get consistent league average performance from non-Steph players with the highest payroll in the league.
On top of that, Steph Curry is 33 years old, Klay Thompson is coming off of two devastating lower leg injuries, and Draymond Green’s shooting has declined for five straight seasons. You’ll always have a chance with Steph Curry, but as he and the championship core age, it’s hard to disaster proof a roster. But when things break right, by which I mean Steph plays at an MVP level, you can have a chance by trotting out a mildly competent supporting cast. The problem seems to be actually finding that supporting cast that won’t shit the bed in a historic fashion.
It’s not like this is a new problem! The 2016 NBA Finals were lost in large part because Harrison Barnes was historically terrible in the final three games of the series. If he’d been merely bad and had shot, say 10-32 in those games rather than 5-32, the Warriors probably win. In the 2019 Finals, Steph Curry scored 47 points in the Game 3 loss without Klay Thompson and the next two leading scorers had... 17 and 11 points. The next game, the Warriors got exactly 11 points from non Steph/Klay wings or guards and lost by 13 points. In the deciding Game 6, the Warriors got 8 combined points in 38 minutes of Alfonzo McKinnie, Shaun Livingston, and Quinn Cook.
I bring up the 2016 and 2019 Finals again because I think it’s absolutely hilarious and rather cruel that a lot of the Warriors’ failures in critical moments contain such impressively bad performances from the surrounding cast. And let’s be real, it shouldn’t be difficult to capitalize on the oodles of open shots that Steph’s gravity creates for his teammates! I will concede that this year is a bit different because the Warriors’ bad spacing makes it harder to get efficient two point looks (see the Wiseman section and his PPP as the roll man and the hilariously low amount of minutes he spent in lineups with two shooters), but for better or worse, it shouldn’t be that hard to get comparable offensive production to what Wiggins and Oubre have provided, especially when you factor in their wild inconsistency.
A frequent joke on Warriors Twitter is that Kelly Oubre and Andrew Wiggins have a coin flip before each game to decide who’s going to play well. This joke is quite funny and as far as my memory serves, is painfully true. But in the interest of quantifying this and not simply relying on my eyes and my memory, let’s put this theory to test. The hypothesis is simple: there have been very few games this year when BOTH Kelly Oubre and Andrew Wiggins scored more than their average points per game (15.4 for Oubre and 17.9 for Wiggins) and the Warriors would probably be a very good team if this happened with any regularity. After doing some extensive box score searches, here’s what I found.
The Warriors 11-3 on the year when BOTH Wiggins and Oubre score more than their average points per game. Two of those losses actually came without Steph Curry, so the Warriors are 11-1 with Steph playing when both Wiggins and Oubre show up, basically. Here are Steph’s numbers in these games, in no particular order:
28 points on 9/17 FG, 4/10 3P — W vs. DAL
40 points on 14/26 FG, 10/19 3P — W vs. ORL
25 points on 8/25 FG, 5/20 3P — W vs. MIA
No Steph — L vs. Charlotte
No Steph — L vs. Sacramento
32 points on 11/24 FG, 6/14, 3P — W vs. CHI
32 points on 11/18 FG, 4/9 3P — W vs. IND
20 points on 7/17 FG, 3/8 3P — L vs. IND
62 points on 18/31 FG, 8/16 3P — W vs. POR
29 points on 9/23 FG, 6/13 3P — W vs. SAC
26 points on 8/22 FG, 3/12 3P — W vs. LAL
26 points on 10/17 FG, 4/8 3P — W vs. SAS
16 points on 6/17 FG, 4/11 3P — W vs. MIN
28 points on 11/17 FG, 6/8 3P — W vs. DET
Steph’s shooting splits here are 48% from the field and about 42% from three, which is more or less in line with his averages on the year and he averages 30.3 points in the games where Oubre and Wiggins both pull their weight. However, you’ll note that Steph’s 62 point explosion is on this list of games, which really bumps up his scoring average. If you remove the Portland game from this list, Steph averages about 27 points a game when both Wiggins and Oubre are volume scorers. It’s also worth pointing out that the Warriors managed to win two games against good opponents where Steph was relatively cold from three — a 3/12 night against the Lakers and a 5/20 night against the Heat. Again, this is a small sample size, but I think it’s still interesting to see that there is some merit to the idea that the Warriors don’t need Steph to be immortal in the extremely unlikely event that both Wiggins and Oubre play well at the same time.
Now let’s check something else. What’s the Warriors record when Steph Curry scores more than 30 points? The answer is that Warriors are 20-10 on the year when Steph scores more than 30 points. You’ll remember, however, that Steph only scored more than 30 points only four times this year when both Wiggins and Oubre scored above their average. So doing some math here, that would indicate that if either A. Steph Curry scores >30 points a game or B. Andrew Wiggins AND Kelly Oubre both score > their average points a game, the Warriors are 27-11.
That means that the Warriors are 4-20 when Steph fails to score 30 points and only one of/neither Wiggins and Oubre scores above their point average this year. The Warriors are essentially FUCKED when Steph scores below his average when Wiggins and Oubre don’t show up at the same time. That has happened in about half of the games this year while simultaneously good performances from Wiggins and Oubre account for less than than 25% of the games this year. This speaks speaks volumes to the inconsistency and unreliability of Wiggins and Oubre, both of whom have a pretty favorable shot diet that many players would kill for. So let’s take a deeper look at the diet of shots that Oubre and Wiggins have gotten this year.
How valuable are Wiggins and Oubre as shooters?
On the year, nearly 40% of Kelly Oubre’s shots are open (a defender 4-6 feet away) or wide open (a defender 6+ feet away) three points. On open shots (17.8% of his total shot frequency), he’s shooting... 26.6% from three. On wide-open shots (19.9% of his total shot frequency), that percentage is 37.8%. Wiggins, predictably, is doing better on his diet of threes. On open threes (16.3% of his total shot frequency), Wiggins shoots 39.6% and on wide-open threes (15.5% of total shot frequency), he makes them at a 39.4% clip.
Just for fun, let’s also take a look at Wiggins and Oubre’s shooting splits on the season and how they compare to the extended runs they’ve had without James Wiseman (I’m not counting the Houston butt injury game and the two Memphis games because that was a much more brief absence).
Wiggins season averages: is shooting 46.9% from the field, 37.7% from three, and 65.8% in the restricted area.
Wiggins’ non-Wiseman stints: 45.5% from the field, 32.3% from three (inconsistency much?), and 71.2% in the restricted area.
Oubre season averages: 43.9% from the field, 30.8% from three, and 69.6% in the restricted area.
Oubre’s non-Wiseman stints: 47.2% from the field, 42.1% from three and 66.2% in the restricted area.
But back to the three point shooting; let’s provide a frame of reference and look at the three point shooting of Glenn Robinson III, who is now out of the league and played all of three and a half games with Steph Curry last year. In his Warriors stint, he shot shot 43.8% on wide-open threes (20.8% of his total shot frequency) and 34.5% on open threes (11.5% total shot frequency). Patrick Williams, who was pretty much the only lottery prospect I felt any confidence about, is shooting 35.6% on wide-open threes (20.1% of total shot frequency), and 40.7% on open threes (6% of total shot frequency). Keep in mind that neither Robinson or Williams have had the pleasure of feasting on a diet of open threes in a Steph Curry ecosystem.
I bring up Williams and Robinson simply to note that it’s not unreasonable to believe that Wiggins and Oubre’s three point production could be approximated by a rookie the Warriors could have drafted and a guy who is literally out of the league. Are the Warriors a better team with Robinson and Williams than they are Wiggins and Oubre? Although the floor spacing would probably be a bit better, I still think that Wiggins’ defense and prowess in isolation (1.10 PPP, which ranks 11th in the NBA of players getting >1 ISO possession per game) would be missed and I expect his isolation PPP might be even more useful next year with increased floor spacing. But someone smart could make an argument that’s mildly convincing that you don’t need much to produce Wiggins’ and Oubre’s offensive production and I’d be willing to consider that argument as valid.
My big point here is that it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to surround Steph Curry with competent and consistent shooters and yet... the Warriors have struggled to do that. More concerning is that the Warriors’ path to developing or acquiring a highlevel creator/shooter is narrow; ideally the Minnesota Timberwolves’ 2021 FRP conveys to the Warriors, but if it doesn’t, the Warriors tradable assets/contracts are an injured and disappointing James Wiseman, their own mid-to-late FRP (assuming the Warriors do not finish with a top 10 record), Andrew Wiggins, Kevon Looney, and Jordan Poole. Keep in mind also that the Warriors will be limited in free agency to using the taxpayer MLE, which is worth approximately $6 million dollars.
While $6 million or so can actually net you a totally acceptable big man — say, Aaron Baynes (approximately $7 million a year, Chris Boucher (a shade under $7 million a year), JaMychal Green (approximately $7 million year), Marc Gasol ($2.5 million a year), Dwight Howard $2.6 million a year), Frank Kaminsky (less than $2 million a year), or Nerlens Noel ($5 million a year) — that same amount limits your options when it comes to getting guards and wings. A few notable examples of guards and wings who signed contracts in that price range in the last offseason: DJ Augustin ($7 million a year), Avery Bradley ($5.6 million a year), Alec Burks ($6 million a year), Pat Connaughton (approximately $5.3 million a year), Kris Dunn ($5 million a year), Austin Rivers (approximately $3 million before getting brought out), Garrett Temple ($5 million a year).
The Warriors might have a path to acquiring a wing or creator with a higher salary slot through a Kelly Oubre sign-and-trade where they take back players or create a trade exception, but I’d imagine that the Warriors would have to give up future draft picks to incentivize a team to hardcap themselves for Kelly Oubre. In the right ecosystem and with increased spacing, Oubre could be useful and perhaps, a positively impactful player for the Warriors, but it’s likely that his production could be replaced by a minimum contract player like Kent Bazemore (42% from three, +1.3 Estimated Plus Minus), as evidenced by Bazemore taking Oubre’s spot in the starting lineup and the Warriors going on a tear.
This is, again, where the Wiseman pick hurts. Wiseman is unlikely to perform to the value of his rookie contract anytime soon ($9.1 million in 2021-2022, $9.6 million in 2022-23, and $12.1 million in 2023-24) and better centers can easily be procured at nearly half the price, while one has to pay an aggressively neutral wing like Tony Snell upwards of $10 million for his services. The Warriors could have spent the #2 pick on a rookie wing/guard like LaMelo Ball or — depending on the offers available — traded down to grab say, Tyrese Haliburton or Devin Vassell and likely received production on par to or exceeding the value of their rookie contracts.
Because Wiseman performed poorly this year, it’s safe to say that his trade value has gone down. And as he approaches his rookie extension, that value is likely to keep decreasing unless Wiseman starts showing serious flashes. Jarrett Allen, who in the pre-season was said to be looking for a contract “in the range of five years and $90 million,” was traded in the last year of his rookie contract for... two second round picks. Keep in mind also that Allen was also a much better player than Wiseman as a rookie (-0.9 OBPM, 0.1 DBPM, -0.8 BPM) and drafted in the late lottery and as such, actually outplayed the value of his rookie contract ($1.7 million —> $2 million —> $2.3 million —> $3.9 million).
If Wiseman continues his trajectory, it will be hard to trade him for value, which in turn limits the Warriors’ ability to surround Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson with impactful players. Andrew Wiggins’ max contract is theoretically tradable in a deal for a star player, but his contract is universally regarded as one of the worst in the NBA and would likely need assets attached to it to get off it. Factor in also that Wiseman will be recovering from a meniscus tear and will spend his summer rehabbing, and there’s no guarantee that Wiseman even makes significant improvements next year.
A merciful conclusion to these posts
The abridged version of all the above text is that the Warriors are in a difficult place with little room for error in the 2021 offseason. Their prized rookie is injured and was historically terrible when healthy, in large part because Steve Kerr made poor tactical decisions, which may or may not be explained — although not necessarily justifiable — by political considerations. The Warriors have three max level contract players, one of whom is coming off of two devastating lower leg injuries, another who is widely considered to have one of the worst contracts in basketball, and the other a 33 year old superstar with a spotty injury history. The Warriors have few tradable assets that would not require sacrificing future picks to trade, the most valuable of which (the top-three protected 2021 Timberwolves FRP, might not even convey.
Still, there is some hope, I think. Steph Curry is still absolutely incredible and Draymond Green is still very useful when he plays extended minutes at the center. There’s also a body of evidence that suggests that when the Warriors replace terrible players with merely mediocre ones, they can compete with most teams in the league. The Warriors’ spacing should also improve next year with a semi-healthy Klay Thompson, increased physical improvement from Jordan Poole, and perhaps, rotation minutes from NBL sharpshooting sensation, Justanian Jessup, which in turn should make it easier for the Warriors to get clean looks at the hoop. If the Minnesota pick conveys, the Warriors have options in front of them.
Whether or not they’ll make the right decision is up for debate. It’ll be hard to know what options are truly feasible without knowing what will happen with the Minnesota pick and until the playoffs are over and some star player’s team has unexpectedly flamed out, perhaps providing a window for the Warriors to go big fish hunting. I could be persuaded to trade both Wiseman and the Minnesota pick for a true star, but I could also see the merit in building for the future and present by keeping the Minnesota pick and trading Wiseman. But this also assumes the Warriors make the right choice with their draft pick, and frankly, their decisions around the margins and in the draft since 2015 do not inspire confidence.
In the 2016-17 season, the Warriors started the season with 7 centers on the roster: Damion Jones, Kevon Looney, Zaza Pachulia, Javale McGee, David West, James McAdoo, and Anderson Varejao. That’s... um... perhaps a gross misallocation of roster spots into a relatively unimportant position. Of their draft picks since 2015 (Kevon Looney, Damion Jones, Patrick McCaw, Jordan Bell, Jacob Evans, Alen Smailagic, Eric Paschall, Jordan Poole, James Wiseman, and Nico Mannion), only Looney, Wiseman, and Poole have more than a tenuous claim to an NBA roster spot in the near future. Unlike, say the Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs, or Dallas Mavericks, the Warriors have also mostly failed at finding useful undrafted players. All of this is to say, I could totally see the Warriors bungling the 2021 draft and/or not making wise decisions around the margin and ending up with an ill-fitting roster that doesn’t have the requisite shot making ability to compensate for the occasional off-night from Steph Curry and his eventual physical decline.
As the draft approaches, I’ll probably start doing some homework on possible prospects and post my thoughts about them here. I don’t know how much I trust my ability to select players I like, but I do think I have an eye for spotting bad players, so maybe that’s how I’ll approach my draft analysis. But in the meantime, the Warriors have 10 games left on the year and I really have no clue what will happen in these games because this team is so wildly unpredictable.
What I’d like to see happen is the Warriors make the playoffs, win their play-in games, and win a first round series. Frankly, I only really care about the Warriors keeping their draft pick as a mitigation strategy in the event that Minnesota pick doesn’t convey. But even then, I don’t really trust the Warriors to make a great pick and I’d much rather the Warriors go into next season with a team of heady veterans and players who can perform at a baseline level of competence consistently than I would another young team. There’s a saying by an NBA writer whose name I can’t place that I’ll paraphrase here: “grown-ass men win you NBA games.” The most special teams, say, the 2014-15 Warriors, are those that win with young men who are not fully grown-ass, but those teams are rare, almost as rare as a player of Steph Curry’s caliber.
And because I recognize just how special Steph Curry is, I want the Warriors to maximize what is left of his prime and the easiest way to do that is to give him a team of grown-ass men and let him do his magic. Let Jordan Poole develop slowly as a Jordan Clarkson facsimile, but make sure he’s got good veterans surrounding him and don’t make him LITERALLY THE ONLY NON-STEPH PLAYER WHO CAN CREATE FOR HIMSELF AND OTHERS ON THE ENTIRE ROSTER. Let Juan Toscano Anderson eventually take over for Draymond Green in a few years, but get a vet C who can eat up minutes so Juan’s body doesn’t break down as rapidly as Draymond’s has over the last few years. Let James Wiseman develop in peace and protect him from the microscope of heightened media attention that comes from playing with Steph Curry, which is to say, trade him.
The most realistic and efficient way for the Warriors to acquire those grown-ass men is for Steph Curry to remind them on the highest stage of who he is and what he’s capable of. The Warriors missed out on Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka types last offseason specifically because of Klay Thompson’s injury and (somewhat reasonable) doubts about how Steph Curry would look on a depleted roster after not having played in nearly a year. Getting a true star in a trade will be tough because of Wiseman’s diminished value, Wiggins’ albatross contract, the question of what to do with Oubre’s salary slot, and the status of the Minnesota pick. There’s too many variables at play to rely on a cure-all trade. The best path to getting quality level vets for a championship run next year is to remind them that Steph Curry is worth believing in and taking a paycut to play with.
Over the next 10 and ideally, more games, all I want is for the rest of the world to be reminded of what I fully believe; you’ll always have a chance at excellence if Steph Curry is on your roster.