Warrior Defense Falls Apart in Loss to Lakers
For the second straight game, the mostly young and inexperienced players that currently make up the Golden State Warriors were unable to upset a team with a far greater amount of experience and talent. On Wednesday night, it came in the form of a 120-94 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. Unlike the previous game, a loss to the Utah Jazz, the Warriors didn’t make the game terribly interesting. They took two brief one-point leads in the opening minutes, then trailed the rest of the way. The Lakers led by double digits for the entire second half and led by more than 15 points for most of it. In other recent losses, the biggest positive has been that the Warriors kept the game close, or at least didn’t get blown out. Wednesday night didn’t even offer that.
The Warrior offense offered at least some semblance of a positive from the game. Five players scored in double figures and the team recorded 29 assists. As usual, D’Angelo Russell led the way with 21 points and eight assists. Willie Cauley-Stein made a couple of nice moves inside en route to 10 points on over 70% shooting from the field. Eric Paschall continues to show he’s not afraid of the big stage, as the rookie scored 15 points and provided the highlight of the night for the Dubs with a running left-hand floater in the lane while being tightly guarded by LeBron James.
Apart from the three-point shooting (25.7%), the offense was competent and continues to be worthy of an NBA floor most of the time. The same things cannot be said about the defense. Lakers players regularly got easy runs to the rim, wide-open opportunities in transition and open jumpers. The Warriors often failed to switch on screens and recover on blown assignments. The primary problem, however, was atrocious interior defense. The Lakers drove to the rim often and the Warriors had no answer for the Lakers once they got into the paint. The Laker distributors, primarily James but also Jared Dudley and Alex Caruso, found easy drop-off passes to big men time and time again. When this wasn’t an option, they could simply throw the ball into the post. The bigs usually got easy dunks anyway. The end result of this was Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee combining for 33 points on over 68% shooting as the team as a whole shot 56.5% on two-pointers. After the game, Steve Kerr acknowledged how much the defense has struggled, both against the Lakers and throughout the season.
“It’s almost impossible to win in this league when you can’t count on getting three stops in a row. We’ve talked about that for years here,” he said. “Honestly, I’m not sure we did that once tonight. It’s defensive breakdowns. It’s just stuff that we’ve got to clean up and we’ve got to get better with if we’re gonna win a game.”
It’s clear that this Warrior team is going to experience growing pains in the form of blowout losses to vastly superior teams from time to time. Wednesday night’s game was an enforcement of that. With a home contest against the Boston Celtics, who currently stand with an NBA-best 9-1 record, those growing pains may continue. After the loss to the Lakers, Draymond Green kept it simple when discussing his team’s challenges.
“I think we’ve already improved some, but we’ve got a long [way] to go,” he said.
Considering the reduced roster, learning on the job is not a bad way for this team to improve. Difficult nights like Wednesday, while never the desired result, will help the young players adjust to NBA basketball. As they continue to do so, the long way away that Green referred to will keep getting closer and closer. It may be millimeters at a time, but closer nonetheless.
Warriors fans were given a moment of hope for the future during the game, and it didn’t happen on the court. Midway through the fourth quarter, the rehabbing Klay Thompson gave a brief interview to ESPN, who was televising the game nationally. As the game played on, he talked about the young players he hopes to soon be playing alongside on the court.
“I’m just enjoying watching these young guys develop, that’s for sure,” he said. “I’m liking what I’m seeing because they have tremendous potential.”
Somewhere down the line, the young guys, who are developing with every game, may very well get a chance to play with Thompson and the rest of the players that would make up a fully healthy roster. There is much work to be done before that happens, but it offers something to look forward to as the currently constructed team does its best to keep up.