Steve Kerr Defends Late Rotation Choices in Loss
The Warriors dropped what most would call a winnable game in Charlotte tonight. The team had some trouble getting anything going, shooting 23% from three while the Hornets continued to torch the nets down the stretch. There are a lot of things this loss was attributable to: Shooting woes, several turnovers at bad times, missed free throws at the end of a game, and passive decision-making by the Warriors’ best player.
The one factor that raised the most eyebrows was Coach Kerr’s decision to keep Kevon Looney on the floor in the final minute. Down 2, Looney was able to draw a foul off a dish from Curry that could’ve easily been a shot, but he bricked both free throws and left the door wide open for the Hornets to close it out.
“We weren’t really doing much at either end so we knew he would solidify the defense, and we thought we could get some people open with his screening” Kerr said when prompted about his decision. “We were searching for combinations all night, and when you never really get that traction, you’re left kind of searching… We were searching for 48 minutes, we just didn’t have anything.”
Looney was a -7 in his minutes on the floor tonight, but he did drag in 8 rebounds and put in a pair of buckets to go with some free throws made earlier. He seemed to struggle a decent bit later in the game against Charlotte’s bigs, leading many to ask why Kerr kept him in before he even missed the two game-tying free-throws.
Looney’s been having a solid season, but was certainly not a typical face in the closing lineup which is what led to most of the shock. Kerr seemed to be aiming for a more defensive tone, but a major flaw seemed to be overlooked: Looney is shooting 59% from the line this season, and hasn’t shot above 65% since coming into the league. Generally closing lineups need some kind of free throw shooting element to them, and having him in the game when Draymond was doing some solid damage (11/6/6 with 2 blocks) to the Hornets bigs seemed like an unnecessary redundancy, especially when Green forced a jump ball that the referee didn’t exactly set up to be even.
The rotation was, in a nutshell, all over the place all tonight, not just for the final minutes. Juan Toscano-Anderson did not see the floor at all, Gary Payton II saw most of his 15 total minutes in the 2nd half, and the Warriors decided to play Damion Lee in crunch time in his first game back, where he was ice-cold from the floor. Lee shot 2/10 from the field, including hitting zero of his four three-point attempts.
Steph Curry didn’t play too hot himself, clocking in a 7/22 shooting night, including 3/13 from beyond the arc. Surprisingly enough, Curry was able to get to the rim, just unable to convert a lot of his short-range shots. He still contributed a lot, however, with 10 assists to his 3 turnovers, and 3 steals in a season that’s been giving him more defensive recognition. He was a game-high +14, and despite his poor shooting, still received some compliments from Kerr about his effort and intensity.
The Warriors retain their league-leading winning percentage and are still 11 and 2. They’ll be in Brooklyn on Tuesday to face off against MVP-candidate Kevin Durant and the Nets in what many would likely consider the team’s biggest challenge yet. How they respond from this loss - and how Kerr adjusts his rotations to deal with Brooklyn’s size - will be very telling of what the Warriors season may look like moving forward.
(Photo credit: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)