Warriors Need to Re-Establish Offensive Identity, Says Kerr

The Warriors really haven’t looked like the Warriors lately, and head coach Steve Kerr is very aware of that. After a tough loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday night despite a 27-point triple-double from Stephen Curry, the dynasty coach said that the team needed to work to re-establish its offensive identity.

“Well you saw last night, we had 5 turnovers in the first few minutes. It was really disappointing; it set a tone, and allowed them to get into transition” Kerr told the media in his post-practice presser.

There’s two ways you could diagnose the Warriors’ issues this season. The first is Curry’s subpar play, as the offense is mainly contingent on his ability to get things going. They don’t call him “The System” for nothing, after all. The other diagnosis is a more prevalent issue the Dubs have dealt with for awhile now:

Turnovers.

Carelessness and somewhat-sloppy play has led to careless mistakes all over the floor, primarily affecting the offense. This isn’t just a problem from the young guys or newer members of the team, but it even happens with Steph and Draymond Green. Both of them just make unnecessary gambles with some passes.

The current “re-establishing” does have to do with these two things, but it’s also about getting Klay Thompson involved into the offense once again. For a guy who hasn’t played in over 2 years, he looks pretty sharp, but the offense doesn’t flow quite as nicely as they try to mold the puzzle that they can fit him into.

“We’ve had slippage over the last 10 games” Kerr continued. “Part of it is just natural ebbs and flows of the NBA season, but part of this is also reincorporating Klay, and then rearranging lineup combinations because every player affects the next guy in the rotation.”

The biggest complaint out of last night was probably lineup-related amongst fans. We should all remember that Coach Kerr is still messing with lineups to see what works and what doesn’t as the team is one player closer to full-strength on the season. That being said, there are some things which it’s pretty obvious even on paper. Some things do work in theory, but rookies getting significant minutes and playing guys based on their contracts does not.

The Warriors have a back-to-back coming up tomorrow and Friday, playing the Milwaukee Bucks first and the Chicago Bulls second, two top teams in the Eastern Conference and possible Finals opponents if all things stack correctly for one or the other. While there shouldn’t be too much stock put into back-to-backs where Draymond Green will not be playing and Klay Thompson will only be playing one of, it’s a good opportunity for Kerr to see what works and what doesn’t on a minimal scale against some of the best in the league.

(Photo credit: Adam Pantozzi / Getty Images)