Why the Warriors Need Time to "Figure It Out"
Steph Curry puts up a triple double. Andrew Wiggins puts up a very efficient 21 points. The young guns showed up a lot more in the second half. And it still wasn’t enough.
After a blown lead and a brutal loss in Miami tonight, there’s plenty of questions surrounding the Warriors and where they go from here. The team is now 3-5, their worst start since the beginning of the dynasty, and there’s a lot of easy targets to blame: James Wiseman has been the main scapegoat, with Klay Thompson a popular second. The youth movement and lack of veteran know-how has been critiqued widely, with many clamoring for the front office to retool and try to keep winning now.
That’s not only a bleak way to look at the problem, but the loss to the Heat tonight doesn’t fall squarely on the shoulders of any of the above. Instead, it was the infamous high-octane scoring group of Wiggins, Curry, Thompson, Poole, and Green which coughed up the loss, losing ground on an 8-point lead and ultimately making costly mistakes down the stretch.
Golden State was once more victim to an old enemy that’s plagued them for seasons: Turnovers at the exact wrong time.
The Warriors had 20 turnovers today. The starters all had net-positive impacts, but they also contributed for the lion’s share of the giveaways: Steph had 5, Klay had 4, Andrew and Draymond had 1 a piece. Lead guard of the closing lineup Jordan Poole contributed 5 himself, including 3 discontinued dribble violations (an irregularity in an NBA game, but one that went both ways tonight). While guys like Wiseman and Moody didn’t impact the game in fully positive ways, it was really those turnovers which swung the momentum far into Miami’s favor down the stretch. It’s what allowed them to stay in the game. Only 2 of those 20 turnovers came outside of that closing lineup; that can’t be happening.
This hasn’t been the primary issue of the Warriors’ early struggles, but instead a symptom of it. The Warriors, once again, are doing plenty of lineup testing within the season’s first few games. We saw this last year, although it produced different results in terms of wins because of the roster’s greater overall level of experience. There’s a myriad of young guys who need to fit in to different roles, and finding those is going to be key moving forward. The starters, per the NBA statistical database’s lineup tool, have been the best group with a box plus/minus of +8.3. The lineups have worked to varying degrees; of the 81, 39 have been at a net BPM of a flat 0 or higher. There are some things that work, even if there’s plenty of low volume to be accounted for.
This is what Steve Kerr does. The Warriors have room to work with, because they have that extra gear in the playoffs. No matter what, their vets are guys who can execute, and if worst comes to worst, the team can run a 9 or 10 man rotation in the postseason and see a lot of success with that. Factoring in the depth is where things are tricky and will need some time. James Wiseman needs more perimeter defenders like Moody and Wiggins around him, Jordan Poole needs much of the same, Jonathan Kuminga needs more spacing to operate in the lane; things like that are where Kerr can experiment a bit. But it’s not going to be instant.
We have to remember that, while some of these losses have been pretty bad and disheartening, we’re 8 games into the season with a relatively-overhauled roster. Things are not going to click immediately, and Golden State will need time to figure things out fully - that’s time that it has, as well. A little more consistency and game reps for each of the young guys will work wonders as we go through the season.
At minimum, however, one thing is obvious: There’s no need to hit the panic button until we get some more established lineups with more volume, and see how they look from there.
(Photo credit: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)