And just like that the Suns are just half a game out of first place in the conference. Look, we just went on the road to play one of the best teams in the conference... who got a career night from their backup starting point guard. It happens. Phoenix is good and has plenty of continuity. I don't even have to squint to see the Warriors going 8-3 over next 11 games and get to 14-12 heading into the Boston game.
And by that time, Klay will have played his way out of his slump. And if he hasn't, he'll have to start accepting the limitations of his current abilities.
So we have one exceptional player with Steph, two very good ones with Loon and Wiggs, one Dray (somewhere between essential and WTF), two players that could/should be more than fine with Klay and Poole - and then the maybes. Does not sound too bad to me. So go on Kerr, make it work again. Somehow…
"It'll be better for everyone to think about how we'd like to deal with the death rattle of the Warriors as we've come to know them."
It seems like just 6-8 weeks ago many people here were posting about wanting to keep Mac McClung and whether the team should bring Andre Iguodala back...?
Our local team that won the last championship just started the season, and it has not gone as well as we'd liked.... lots of moving parts and intrigue as the season progresses. As a fan I'm interested in seeing how things play out with the team that our ownership, management and coaching staff have assembled.
I do like that most of what we now read is actually about the on the court basketball ... however fascinating all the line-ups, trades, contracts, coaching decisions may be.
I have been reading a lot about what the team should be doing and my comments were more in general rather than meant as a reply to you. Yes, I quoted you and can understand that you feel I should have posted it as a reply. My apologies for that.
I do feel that there is a lot of basketball yet to be played this season and, for me, it is premature, to look what might eventually happen this year.
Watching the games and the play is the best part of the basketball season.
Knicks had a huge late comeback against the Nuggets (sans Jokic) last night; the Nuggets were up 10 with 7 and change left but only scored seven points down the stretch and lost the game. Randle was a beast and finished with 34. We’re at home so I actually have hope we can win it.
I think the Warriors are suffering from a systemic problem. They still have five excellent starters three of whom are aging. And after that almost nothing. They gave away five bench players which was essentially their whole bench and replaced it with one guard who may or may not turn out to be a real help to the team and one forward who may or may not learn the warrior system over the course of this fall term. Five guys gone, one good replacement one possibly OK replacement. But basically they decimated their bench.
Meanwhile over the last five years the league has changed in the types of players that are succeeding on teams, that are getting drafted and developed on teams. Teams are now built to be like the Warriors. Teams have drafted for large wings, large shooters, good backup shooters, requiring people who can shoot three-point shots, even switch fives one of whom, the inimitable Jokić, spends most of his time playing at the three-point line. These teams are full of middle aged (sic!) and talented players who are to some degree running wing rings around the Warriors. The coaches know how to defend the warriors, the best ones know how to defend Curry, and they have shooters among their starters and on their benches. They are built like the Warriors to beat the Warriors and they are younger and springier than the Warriors’ starters.
To me the question is not whether you play Poole here or play Poole there, it how do you evolve a middle. How do you evolve a viable bench starting with only one or two good players?
But then I am a basketball neophyte and there may already be an answer to this systemic issue that I perceive. (But it does not seem to be one young talented player who is basically just out of high school and another talented player who basically missed college and the amount of training on how to play basketball he would’ve received there. Moody is moot. As an ecologist I can tell you, you do not depend on babies from the bottom to fill out those intermediate niches)
Alas, is it possible that last night’s absence of his Ass Holiness, Chris Paul actually contributed to our loss. He may well have slowed the game down; engaged in a long distance shooting contest with our King and thereby prevented his merry men from going thermonuclear from three. Just a melancholic reflection from a character who has obviously enjoyed better days.
>> Twitter HR is now telling everyone who does not sign the ridiculous new pledge they have resigned. Employment law does not work that way. You cannot deprive people of unemployment benefits and wrongful termination cases by saying that they resigned. Nice try though!
Misinformation on steroids? Plus facebook’s meta debacle - scraping for revenue on their echo chamber algorithm misinformation ads and Jan 6 will look like a grandmas having a bakesale compared to whats coming?
I love twitter. Love the direct access to my favorite artists, writers and musicians. Plus all the cool and funny people on there. I use the block and mute buttons liberally
Paul Krugman runs some threads on twitter that are interesting. It would work a lot better if he did it on his substack page which doesn't have the idiotic 144 character limit, but apparently the NYT put the kabosh on that. The NYT pitchbot is mildly entertaining as well but otherwise yes, there's not much there there.
If you think it’s a good idea to bench Klay and start Poole in his place, the lineup stats say otherwise. With Klay out of the lineup, the +/- goes from 6.4 to .7. Rebounds per game decrease from 13 to 3.5 and assists decrease from 11 to 3.3.
As much as we all want to try something new, keeping the starting lineup together for a significant part of the game still makes sense.
The starting lineup is still beastly. Klay is getting grief for shooting inefficiently, but he still moves the ball and moves on D and guards the post effectively. He might stop moving in glaring moments but the balance of his efforts with the starters is positive.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Poole. When he’s not hitting shots it gets ugly fast. To earn that contract he needs to be a complete player whether he’s making or missing.
Well, I don't think you can go by those stats. After all, the whole reason to play JP3 with the starters is that we would expect him to play BETTER. And in his limited opportunities starting, he has.
I don't honestly know what the solution is. But I don't think these stats are a good reason not to try Poole /starting/ next to Curry (a different situation than most of what has happened this season when they've played together).
I believe the arguments in favor of starting Poole are that he plays better in games he starts (for mental reasons) not based on which lineups that would put him in.
I'm not convinced by those arguments but there may be a little bit of truth to them.
I also think that it just doesn't make sense for the team to start Poole. If they do bench Klay, the starter should be Moody imo (might even be able to make a case for Jerome). The Poole/DDV combo leading the bench makes sense to me, people were focused on how the starters were doing last night but it should be noted that the Curry-less units were only -1 pre-garbage time (+4 in garbage time) which is perfectly acceptable, and Poole/DDV played all of those minutes.
EDIT: But they aren't benching Klay, so it's purely hypothetical.
I like that idea of Moody starting in place of Klay. He has the right size at 6’5 compared to Klay at 6’6 and his EFG% is better than Klay’s right now. The solution is to sit Klay out every time there’s a back to back like they did on Mon and then try something different like start Moody. Of course Klay’s not stupid and will figure it out.
well, you could do something like "Poole plays first 6 minutes of each quarter, Klay plays second 6" (with Donte filling in the remaining backcourt minutes), but not playing three-guard units just puts even more pressure on the near total lack of reliable frontcourt depth
The gap between Steph and 2nd place right now is the same size as the gap between 2nd and 39th (three-way tie between Devin Booker, KCP, and Trae Young at 32 made.) In addition to shooting by far the highest volume of 3PA in the league (both on a per-minute and in absolute numbers of attempts) he's also shooting a better percentage than 90% of the league. Raw stats: 72 made of 161 attempted.
Less fun stat, overall the Warriors have 3 guys among the 21 players with at least 100 3-point attempts, but Klay (38/115 for 33%, T-10th in attempts) and Poole (34/101, 33.7%, T-20th in attempts) are near the bottom of that group in accuracy, above only the following guys:
- Kelly Oubre Jr., 39/122 (32%)
- CJ McCollum, 34/107 (31.8%)
- Trae Young, 32/104 (30.8%)
- Luka Doncic, 30/103 (29.1%)
Some other dudes from that group who are shooting better than Klay & Jordan include Ant-Man, Donovan Mitchell, Max Strus, Keldon Johnson, Jordan Clarkson, etc.
To make up for it, here's a "well, it could be worse" moment:
LeBron James, 17/71 (23.9%) is the Laker with the most 3PA. He's the only Laker in the league's top 100 by attempts, but that percentage is even worse than Westbrook (18/53, 34%). Is it time to roll out "LeBrick James"???
Another fun stat, league leader in AST/TOV ratio right now is… Kevon Looney with 47 assists and only 7 turnovers—stat lines that are almost exactly half of Chris Paul's. Oh, but 4 of Loon's are moving screens and 1 is a travel, whereas CP3 has a palming violation and the rest are bad passes.
Too slow. He is a good post up player and rebounder as well as excellent screener. But he is a keeper already and has a very friendly price tag. We need a fucking monster in the paint, not just a monster like Draymond, who dominates both ways. No too easy to find, though.
moving on from pairings to 3-man lineups, there are only three high usage (100+ minutes) trios on the Warriors with a negative net rating:
Poole-Wiggins-Dray (-7.2)
Poole-Steph-Wiggs (-6.2)
Poole-Steph-Dray (-3.1)
Poole is not in any other high usage lineups; the high usage trio with the next worst net rating is Steph-Wiggs-Dray at +6.4 (the best is Steph-Wiggs-Loon at +20.4 in 226 minutes, wow)
I really don’t like the idea of three man lineup stats tbh because even those three you posted can be ranked by someone like wiseman or if the other 2 players fuck the spacing up
The Curry/Wiggins/Green/Looney foursome has a +19.7 net rating in 202 minutes. When those four are together good things happen, whether with Poole or Klay or whoever next to them.
Also keep in mind the Curry/Wiggs/Draymond trio is weighed down in comparison to the Curry/Wiggins/Looney trio because they have minutes with Wiseman (Looney does not) and minutes with the struggling Nickname Lineup (interestingly, don't think we've seen Curry/Poole/Klay/Wiggins/Looney yet despite that being 5 of the core 6).
Looney has a +9.4 net rating on the season which I think is an indication of how good the Warriors are when they have a proper center. The data screams to me that the Warriors really need a quality backup center (same as in 2020-2021 tbh).
And if you switch looney for klay in that lineup it’s horrible, we need more looney and if dray is going to be at the five it should be to unlock kumingas scoring off the bench
Poole is in 14 moderate usage (48+ minutes) trios without Wiseman, and there's some more positive groupings there:
Poole-Moody-Kuminga + 9.4 in 50 minutes
Poole-Steph-Loon +2.7 in 62 minutes
Poole-Moody-Loon +1.9 in 53 minutes
Poole-JMG-Loon +1 in 54 minutes
but those 14 trios include the 13 worst on the team, as well as the 15th (14th is Steph-Wiggs-Dray, +6.4 over 345 minutes); 10 of the 14 are negative & a majority are worse than -3.
and that Poole-Moody-Kuminga lineup (+ Poole-Kuminga-Lamb, which at 47 min just missed the cut but is +12.1) is probably being inflated by the Spurs game
OK, so, I said last night's game would be a good test of how well the team has retooled.
Poole and Klay are looking out of sorts again. I still have faith they'll find their game.
I'm less confident in JaMychal Green finding a way to become a bigger contributor to winning; he had another pretty bad game. The box score has him with team-high +/- at +7, but this is one of those cases where I don't put stock in that. There were some minutes early in the 4th where he was getting bodied by Landale and I was begging Kerr through my TV to put Loon back in. (Looney did not play at all in the 4th quarter for some reason; Kerr subbed in Green instead; I understand why, but it didn't work out.)
We did see some more zone D but it wasn't exactly working.
Steph's offensive explosion was awesome but I spotted at least one or two transition plays where he wasn't back and in position on defense in time, leading to scramble rotations and an open shot which, of course, the Suns canned.
Wiggins had a rough game. Got in foul trouble early (perhaps unfairly) and seemed to struggle to get in rhythm when he came back in. Was *not* crashing the boards as we've seen him do for much of this season so far.
Overall it wasn't that bad of a loss on its own, but the trend that it continues definitely sucks. It seems that in pursuit of the "two timelines" plan, the front office trimmed down the "win now" core as thin as they dared and it turns out they trimmed too much. It doesn't take much going wrong for the team to lose winnable games now.
My view is that the team still *can* win a championship this season but unless the roster changes it's pretty unlikely now. We need a few players to figure some stuff out, the core guys to stay healthy and if it doesn't happen soon we're going to need even more just to crawl back up the standings. Some of that will definitely happen but there are also plenty of things that could still go even more wrong to offset it.
Poole is part of almost all the Warriors negative high-usage (100+ min) pairings, and his pairing with almost every other player on the team is negative:
We need more looney, looney should damm near match all of steph's minutes and then non steph minutes run out a small ball unit of poole ddv wiggins kuminga green.
Let lamb klay and sometimes moody play with looney and curry, no more poole kuminga looney units
Damm, looking at the 5 man lineup stats, it's not that poole isnt working with the starters, it's when poole comes in for looney with draymond at the 5 that's killing us. Curry poole wiggins green looney is still positive
Is it though? From NBA.com lineup tools, the Steph/JP/Klay/Wiggs/Dray lineup is only -7 in 64 minutes... which is negative, but far from "killing us". That line up is oddly shooting 29% on 3PA, so even a reasonable improvement in 3 point shooting to 38% would flip that -7 to +8.
But look at it compared to if you switch klay for looney, it’s like a 30 point jump, yea it’s only -7 but that’s supposed to be our death squad so anything less then dominating is killing us
With them both shooting well-below their regular percentages, that makes sense. First and foremost, they’re both supposed to be among the top scoring options in this offense, with Poole’s playmaking and Klay’s defense supposedly the secondary skills that bring value. If they aren’t scoring efficiently, those secondary skills aren’t enough to make up for all their other weaknesses.
I think we’re really starting to get into the grey area of “too much deference to the core”. Obviously, Kerr and Myers know what they’re dealing with far more intimately than us, but it seems pretty obvious to ask. I suspect they know what they’re doing and aren’t thrilled about it, but feel they have no choice.
I struggle with the too much “he’s earned it” mentality.
Ramona with a good take on overall chemistry: https://youtu.be/GV1Px6A9ZoE
Talking heads.
Nets beat the Blazers 109-107
And just like that the Suns are just half a game out of first place in the conference. Look, we just went on the road to play one of the best teams in the conference... who got a career night from their backup starting point guard. It happens. Phoenix is good and has plenty of continuity. I don't even have to squint to see the Warriors going 8-3 over next 11 games and get to 14-12 heading into the Boston game.
😁
And by that time, Klay will have played his way out of his slump. And if he hasn't, he'll have to start accepting the limitations of his current abilities.
Some good news: With the Spurs losing tonight, we're about to take over sole possession of 12th place in the West.
:)
We’re number 12! We’re number 12!
Only 4 games behind!!!
So we have one exceptional player with Steph, two very good ones with Loon and Wiggs, one Dray (somewhere between essential and WTF), two players that could/should be more than fine with Klay and Poole - and then the maybes. Does not sound too bad to me. So go on Kerr, make it work again. Somehow…
I think DDV is solid. Just had injuries
"It'll be better for everyone to think about how we'd like to deal with the death rattle of the Warriors as we've come to know them."
It seems like just 6-8 weeks ago many people here were posting about wanting to keep Mac McClung and whether the team should bring Andre Iguodala back...?
Our local team that won the last championship just started the season, and it has not gone as well as we'd liked.... lots of moving parts and intrigue as the season progresses. As a fan I'm interested in seeing how things play out with the team that our ownership, management and coaching staff have assembled.
I do like that most of what we now read is actually about the on the court basketball ... however fascinating all the line-ups, trades, contracts, coaching decisions may be.
Sorry if this offended you.
I have been reading a lot about what the team should be doing and my comments were more in general rather than meant as a reply to you. Yes, I quoted you and can understand that you feel I should have posted it as a reply. My apologies for that.
I do feel that there is a lot of basketball yet to be played this season and, for me, it is premature, to look what might eventually happen this year.
Watching the games and the play is the best part of the basketball season.
Knicks had a huge late comeback against the Nuggets (sans Jokic) last night; the Nuggets were up 10 with 7 and change left but only scored seven points down the stretch and lost the game. Randle was a beast and finished with 34. We’re at home so I actually have hope we can win it.
Don't you mean the Knicks?
Derp. Been a long day. Fixed.
I think the Warriors are suffering from a systemic problem. They still have five excellent starters three of whom are aging. And after that almost nothing. They gave away five bench players which was essentially their whole bench and replaced it with one guard who may or may not turn out to be a real help to the team and one forward who may or may not learn the warrior system over the course of this fall term. Five guys gone, one good replacement one possibly OK replacement. But basically they decimated their bench.
Meanwhile over the last five years the league has changed in the types of players that are succeeding on teams, that are getting drafted and developed on teams. Teams are now built to be like the Warriors. Teams have drafted for large wings, large shooters, good backup shooters, requiring people who can shoot three-point shots, even switch fives one of whom, the inimitable Jokić, spends most of his time playing at the three-point line. These teams are full of middle aged (sic!) and talented players who are to some degree running wing rings around the Warriors. The coaches know how to defend the warriors, the best ones know how to defend Curry, and they have shooters among their starters and on their benches. They are built like the Warriors to beat the Warriors and they are younger and springier than the Warriors’ starters.
To me the question is not whether you play Poole here or play Poole there, it how do you evolve a middle. How do you evolve a viable bench starting with only one or two good players?
But then I am a basketball neophyte and there may already be an answer to this systemic issue that I perceive. (But it does not seem to be one young talented player who is basically just out of high school and another talented player who basically missed college and the amount of training on how to play basketball he would’ve received there. Moody is moot. As an ecologist I can tell you, you do not depend on babies from the bottom to fill out those intermediate niches)
Alas, is it possible that last night’s absence of his Ass Holiness, Chris Paul actually contributed to our loss. He may well have slowed the game down; engaged in a long distance shooting contest with our King and thereby prevented his merry men from going thermonuclear from three. Just a melancholic reflection from a character who has obviously enjoyed better days.
I went from eh to now slightly worried about whats going on with Twitter
Why worry? You have a stake jn twitter?
What’s going on with Twitter?
https://www.engadget.com/twitter-hit-with-mass-resignations-after-elon-musk-hardcore-ultimatum-004304057.html
Add to that:
>> Twitter HR is now telling everyone who does not sign the ridiculous new pledge they have resigned. Employment law does not work that way. You cannot deprive people of unemployment benefits and wrongful termination cases by saying that they resigned. Nice try though!
https://twitter.com/LisaBloom/status/1593144267236835330
Misinformation on steroids? Plus facebook’s meta debacle - scraping for revenue on their echo chamber algorithm misinformation ads and Jan 6 will look like a grandmas having a bakesale compared to whats coming?
Haha.
I was referencing facebook and twitter’s (and social media in general) fomenting and enhancing (mostly right wing) extremism. 😀
Twitter has been a cesspool the world is better off without.
I would miss it. Great site tbh, a lot of comedy if you follow the right people.
I've always said there are two keys to enjoying Twitter:
1) Follow people, not corporations
2) Never tweet
If you’re shooting threes
hey, one out of two aint bad, right?
I love twitter. Love the direct access to my favorite artists, writers and musicians. Plus all the cool and funny people on there. I use the block and mute buttons liberally
Paul Krugman runs some threads on twitter that are interesting. It would work a lot better if he did it on his substack page which doesn't have the idiotic 144 character limit, but apparently the NYT put the kabosh on that. The NYT pitchbot is mildly entertaining as well but otherwise yes, there's not much there there.
But how will they fill my yahoo news feed with “articles” that aggregate how influencers and celebs are reacting to vacuous occurrences?!?!
this is why we do it
Serious thanks to our entire community!!
If you think it’s a good idea to bench Klay and start Poole in his place, the lineup stats say otherwise. With Klay out of the lineup, the +/- goes from 6.4 to .7. Rebounds per game decrease from 13 to 3.5 and assists decrease from 11 to 3.3.
As much as we all want to try something new, keeping the starting lineup together for a significant part of the game still makes sense.
The starting lineup is still beastly. Klay is getting grief for shooting inefficiently, but he still moves the ball and moves on D and guards the post effectively. He might stop moving in glaring moments but the balance of his efforts with the starters is positive.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Poole. When he’s not hitting shots it gets ugly fast. To earn that contract he needs to be a complete player whether he’s making or missing.
Klay moves the ball? Seems to me he’s been even more of a ball stopper than usual.
Well, I don't think you can go by those stats. After all, the whole reason to play JP3 with the starters is that we would expect him to play BETTER. And in his limited opportunities starting, he has.
I don't honestly know what the solution is. But I don't think these stats are a good reason not to try Poole /starting/ next to Curry (a different situation than most of what has happened this season when they've played together).
It would make more sense to have the starters play a full quarter and 5 min before we see a single sub come on in the 2nd.
I believe the arguments in favor of starting Poole are that he plays better in games he starts (for mental reasons) not based on which lineups that would put him in.
I'm not convinced by those arguments but there may be a little bit of truth to them.
I also think that it just doesn't make sense for the team to start Poole. If they do bench Klay, the starter should be Moody imo (might even be able to make a case for Jerome). The Poole/DDV combo leading the bench makes sense to me, people were focused on how the starters were doing last night but it should be noted that the Curry-less units were only -1 pre-garbage time (+4 in garbage time) which is perfectly acceptable, and Poole/DDV played all of those minutes.
EDIT: But they aren't benching Klay, so it's purely hypothetical.
It’s the Warriors tradition isn’t it? You suck, have a spot with Curry to see if that makes you look better.
I like that idea of Moody starting in place of Klay. He has the right size at 6’5 compared to Klay at 6’6 and his EFG% is better than Klay’s right now. The solution is to sit Klay out every time there’s a back to back like they did on Mon and then try something different like start Moody. Of course Klay’s not stupid and will figure it out.
well, you could do something like "Poole plays first 6 minutes of each quarter, Klay plays second 6" (with Donte filling in the remaining backcourt minutes), but not playing three-guard units just puts even more pressure on the near total lack of reliable frontcourt depth
Fun season stat so far, 3-pointers made.
5. Kevin Huerter, 50
2-4 (three-way tie). Buddy Hield, Keldon Johnson, Jayson Tatum, 52 each
1. Stephen Curry, 72.
The gap between Steph and 2nd place right now is the same size as the gap between 2nd and 39th (three-way tie between Devin Booker, KCP, and Trae Young at 32 made.) In addition to shooting by far the highest volume of 3PA in the league (both on a per-minute and in absolute numbers of attempts) he's also shooting a better percentage than 90% of the league. Raw stats: 72 made of 161 attempted.
Less fun stat, overall the Warriors have 3 guys among the 21 players with at least 100 3-point attempts, but Klay (38/115 for 33%, T-10th in attempts) and Poole (34/101, 33.7%, T-20th in attempts) are near the bottom of that group in accuracy, above only the following guys:
- Kelly Oubre Jr., 39/122 (32%)
- CJ McCollum, 34/107 (31.8%)
- Trae Young, 32/104 (30.8%)
- Luka Doncic, 30/103 (29.1%)
Some other dudes from that group who are shooting better than Klay & Jordan include Ant-Man, Donovan Mitchell, Max Strus, Keldon Johnson, Jordan Clarkson, etc.
To make up for it, here's a "well, it could be worse" moment:
LeBron James, 17/71 (23.9%) is the Laker with the most 3PA. He's the only Laker in the league's top 100 by attempts, but that percentage is even worse than Westbrook (18/53, 34%). Is it time to roll out "LeBrick James"???
Huerter is shooting a ridiculous 52.6% from three (2nd among qualifiers) on high volume. Sheesh.
I had no idea Doncic is having an awful time shooting threes so far this season.
Another fun stat, league leader in AST/TOV ratio right now is… Kevon Looney with 47 assists and only 7 turnovers—stat lines that are almost exactly half of Chris Paul's. Oh, but 4 of Loon's are moving screens and 1 is a travel, whereas CP3 has a palming violation and the rest are bad passes.
In short, Loon > "PointGod" passing.
That might be more evidence for my argument that Looney is an ideal candidate to take on the Draymond roles on both O and D if he departs.
Too slow. He is a good post up player and rebounder as well as excellent screener. But he is a keeper already and has a very friendly price tag. We need a fucking monster in the paint, not just a monster like Draymond, who dominates both ways. No too easy to find, though.
So you could say Klay and Poole are shooting like MVP candidates?
But we wish they were shooting like role-players.
moving on from pairings to 3-man lineups, there are only three high usage (100+ minutes) trios on the Warriors with a negative net rating:
Poole-Wiggins-Dray (-7.2)
Poole-Steph-Wiggs (-6.2)
Poole-Steph-Dray (-3.1)
Poole is not in any other high usage lineups; the high usage trio with the next worst net rating is Steph-Wiggs-Dray at +6.4 (the best is Steph-Wiggs-Loon at +20.4 in 226 minutes, wow)
I really don’t like the idea of three man lineup stats tbh because even those three you posted can be ranked by someone like wiseman or if the other 2 players fuck the spacing up
if anyone knows a platform where we could filter out Wiseman minutes…
it's the consistency of the pattern with Poole in pairings & trios that rings big alarm bells for me
The Curry/Wiggins/Green/Looney foursome has a +19.7 net rating in 202 minutes. When those four are together good things happen, whether with Poole or Klay or whoever next to them.
Also keep in mind the Curry/Wiggs/Draymond trio is weighed down in comparison to the Curry/Wiggins/Looney trio because they have minutes with Wiseman (Looney does not) and minutes with the struggling Nickname Lineup (interestingly, don't think we've seen Curry/Poole/Klay/Wiggins/Looney yet despite that being 5 of the core 6).
Looney has a +9.4 net rating on the season which I think is an indication of how good the Warriors are when they have a proper center. The data screams to me that the Warriors really need a quality backup center (same as in 2020-2021 tbh).
bolstering this point: Steph-Poole-Wiggs-Dray-Loon (Warriors third most played 5-man unit at 31 min across 6 games) is +7.1
And if you switch looney for klay in that lineup it’s horrible, we need more looney and if dray is going to be at the five it should be to unlock kumingas scoring off the bench
Poole is in 14 moderate usage (48+ minutes) trios without Wiseman, and there's some more positive groupings there:
Poole-Moody-Kuminga + 9.4 in 50 minutes
Poole-Steph-Loon +2.7 in 62 minutes
Poole-Moody-Loon +1.9 in 53 minutes
Poole-JMG-Loon +1 in 54 minutes
but those 14 trios include the 13 worst on the team, as well as the 15th (14th is Steph-Wiggs-Dray, +6.4 over 345 minutes); 10 of the 14 are negative & a majority are worse than -3.
YIKES, Jordan
and that Poole-Moody-Kuminga lineup (+ Poole-Kuminga-Lamb, which at 47 min just missed the cut but is +12.1) is probably being inflated by the Spurs game
OK, so, I said last night's game would be a good test of how well the team has retooled.
Poole and Klay are looking out of sorts again. I still have faith they'll find their game.
I'm less confident in JaMychal Green finding a way to become a bigger contributor to winning; he had another pretty bad game. The box score has him with team-high +/- at +7, but this is one of those cases where I don't put stock in that. There were some minutes early in the 4th where he was getting bodied by Landale and I was begging Kerr through my TV to put Loon back in. (Looney did not play at all in the 4th quarter for some reason; Kerr subbed in Green instead; I understand why, but it didn't work out.)
We did see some more zone D but it wasn't exactly working.
Steph's offensive explosion was awesome but I spotted at least one or two transition plays where he wasn't back and in position on defense in time, leading to scramble rotations and an open shot which, of course, the Suns canned.
Wiggins had a rough game. Got in foul trouble early (perhaps unfairly) and seemed to struggle to get in rhythm when he came back in. Was *not* crashing the boards as we've seen him do for much of this season so far.
Overall it wasn't that bad of a loss on its own, but the trend that it continues definitely sucks. It seems that in pursuit of the "two timelines" plan, the front office trimmed down the "win now" core as thin as they dared and it turns out they trimmed too much. It doesn't take much going wrong for the team to lose winnable games now.
My view is that the team still *can* win a championship this season but unless the roster changes it's pretty unlikely now. We need a few players to figure some stuff out, the core guys to stay healthy and if it doesn't happen soon we're going to need even more just to crawl back up the standings. Some of that will definitely happen but there are also plenty of things that could still go even more wrong to offset it.
of Warriors lineup pairings with at least 100 minutes, Poole-Klay has the second worst net rating at -16 (behind/ahead of Poole-Wiseman at -27.2 lol)
Klay, otoh:
Klay-Loon is +13.1 (fourth best high usage lineup)
Klay-Wiggs is +8.4 (fifth)
Klay-Dray is +8.2 (sixth)
Steph-Klay is +7.9 (seventh)
only other player Klay has more than 100 (or even 48) minutes with is Poole (disastrous, as discussed)
(so, Klay has been in much more consistent lineups, namely the starters, than Poole, who has been in a rotating disaster of bench lineups)
Poole is part of almost all the Warriors negative high-usage (100+ min) pairings, and his pairing with almost every other player on the team is negative:
Poole-Wiseman (-27.2)
Poole-Klay (-16)
Poole-Wiggins (-9.6)
*JMG-Moody (-7.4)
Poole-Steph (-6.6)
Poole-JMG (-6.5)
Poole-Kuminga (-5.4)
Poole-Looney (-5.1) [even with Loon!]
Poole-Dray (-4)
Poole-Moody (-3.7)
Poole is positive with Lamb, thassit
other disastrous pairings with at least one game (48 min) worth of run:
*Wiseman-Kuminga, 56 min, -34.5
*Wiseman-JMG, 78 min, -31.7
*Kuminga-Jerome, 51 min, -30.3
*Steph-Kuminga, 47 min (close enough), -22
*Wiggins-Lamb, 52 min, -20.8
*Jerome-Moody, 51 min, -18.8
*Wiseman-Moody, 83 min, -18.1
*Steph-Wiseman, 63 min, -17.6
A bit of levity...
HOW IS STEPH CURRY NOT A 99 OVERALL IN NBA 2K23?! - Zach Lowe | NBA Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWWsy4KCAjw
And here's a song for the current Warriors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XwXliCK19Y
We need more looney, looney should damm near match all of steph's minutes and then non steph minutes run out a small ball unit of poole ddv wiggins kuminga green.
Let lamb klay and sometimes moody play with looney and curry, no more poole kuminga looney units
Damm, looking at the 5 man lineup stats, it's not that poole isnt working with the starters, it's when poole comes in for looney with draymond at the 5 that's killing us. Curry poole wiggins green looney is still positive
Is it though? From NBA.com lineup tools, the Steph/JP/Klay/Wiggs/Dray lineup is only -7 in 64 minutes... which is negative, but far from "killing us". That line up is oddly shooting 29% on 3PA, so even a reasonable improvement in 3 point shooting to 38% would flip that -7 to +8.
But look at it compared to if you switch klay for looney, it’s like a 30 point jump, yea it’s only -7 but that’s supposed to be our death squad so anything less then dominating is killing us
That’s just an unreasonable expectation, imo
it's the Poole-Klay pairing, I think
With them both shooting well-below their regular percentages, that makes sense. First and foremost, they’re both supposed to be among the top scoring options in this offense, with Poole’s playmaking and Klay’s defense supposedly the secondary skills that bring value. If they aren’t scoring efficiently, those secondary skills aren’t enough to make up for all their other weaknesses.
Green isn’t rebounding well enough. That lineup is better with Looney on spacing and rebounding. Not sure why they like the Dray lineup better.
I think we’re really starting to get into the grey area of “too much deference to the core”. Obviously, Kerr and Myers know what they’re dealing with far more intimately than us, but it seems pretty obvious to ask. I suspect they know what they’re doing and aren’t thrilled about it, but feel they have no choice.
I struggle with the too much “he’s earned it” mentality.
Yeah, not enough deference in the off-season and too much now. The combo isn’t looking great.
Steph klay iggy wiggins green please