DNHQ Late Night: These Warriors are somethin' else

Riley Gaucher has some late night vibes for the HQ discussing GSW's most recent victory.

Greetings, late night HQ brethren and sistren. We’re serving you up something hot and warm on this cold, rainy fall night in the Bay Area, with a recap of the last Golden State Warriors game from our DNHQ intern Riley Gaucher. Cozy up and enjoy, and show your love to Rileyyyyy!

As the old adage goes: “Good, Fast and Cheap. You can have 2. Good and fast won't be cheap, fast and cheap won't be good, and good and cheap won't be fast.” Or put in the more relatable terms of college students’ priorities: 

The Warriors have faced a similar dilemma all year long when trying to pick a starting lineup. The key for the Death Lineup and the Hamptons 5 was that every player around Steph Curry and Draymond Green could shoot, dribble and defend. In contrast, basically any player on the current roster not named Andrew Wiggins or De’Anthony Melton struggles with at least one of those three critical skills.

Melton’s ability to shoot at a high level, create shots off the dribble and clamp the best perimeter players in the league made him the perfect fit to pair with Steph Curry in the starting backcourt. It’s why he earned the full midlevel exception this offseason even coming off an injury plagued year, which made him the Warriors’ biggest free agent signing since D’Angelo Russell.

In the brief window when he was on the court he’d already been really important to the Warriors’ biggest wins and looked like he would raise the team’s ceiling considerably.

Unfortunately they’re now back to square one, because before yesterday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks, the team announced that Melton will need season-ending surgery to repair his sprained ACL. 

At the end of the season, that announcement will be far more impactful than the 120-97 Warriors win that followed, a game that was both exactly and not quite as comfortable as the score suggests.

With that in mind, let’s start with the more important development from yesterday and review the rotational possibilities without Melton. Like the saying warned, every option to replace him in the starting lineup and/or take on a larger role comes with real tradeoffs:

• Brandon Podziemski is one of the Warriors’ best ball handlers and his sound team defense is very helpful. But he can’t hit the side of a barn at the moment and he doesn’t have the size to truly cover for Steph against bigger or faster guards. 

• Moses Moody is a good shooter, with both length and strength on defense, but his handle is perfunctory at this stage, he can’t really create any separation off the dribble and he struggles defending quicker guards.

• Buddy Hield is an ELITE shooter who’s ball handling has been a pleasant surprise. However, while his defense is massively improved in the Warriors’ system, he’s still below average on that end and when played next to Steph creates one too many mismatches for offenses to exploit. Plus he’s seemed to especially thrive in a 6th man role. 

• Gary Payton II’s ability to defend might be one of the three largest outlier skills on the entire roster (Steph’s shooting and Draymond’s ability to read opposing offenses being the others). But this year his age is starting to show a hair and he feels just a tick less physically overwhelming. Which makes it more difficult to accommodate the fact that he basically doesn’t play on-ball, his shot was never really respected and the growth he’s shown from the corners the past few years has disappeared this season.

• All of that leaves Lindy Waters III as the most natural replacement for Melton. He probably isn’t the best player among these options, and he doesn’t have the ceiling or singular trait that makes him a must-play. He is, however, the least flawed of any of his fellow guards, and that ends up making him more additive than his baseline talent might suggest. Waters is pretty clearly the third best shooter on the team, and the fluidity with which he comes off of screens and is able to get his shot off without his feet set is such a boon in Steve Kerr’s system. He has good size at 6’6”, which he pairs with good foot speed and activity levels. His handle seems cleaner and more natural than Moody’s but less effective than Podz’, and so far he hasn't really tried to take anyone one-on-one. Taken together, Lindy’s profile as a player might not overly impress, but he does take the least off the table and that counts for a lot more than one might think, as evidenced by his continuing to start.

Describing Waters as someone who plays because he reads the game well and fits into the coaching staff’s desired play style might understandably draw unflattering parallels to one of the fan base's biggest villains of the past few years; Anthony Lamb. This situation feels fundamentally different though, because the Warriors invested assets to acquire Waters from a team with an outstanding developmental pedigree in the Thunder, he has more on-court potential for growth, and most critically there are not serious off court concerns about his conduct.

There’s also naturally some consternation amongst fans about why a former undrafted player from a different organization is getting more immediate run and a seemingly longer leash than the two homegrown SG prospects in Moody and Podz. It’s entirely fair to criticize the process that led to only 19 minutes for Moody, 15 for Podz and 30 for Waters in the game last night, but it’s extremely difficult to argue with the results.

As to the results, the only real drama in the game was whether the Hawks late third quarter push would make the 4th competitive enough to force Steph Curry to play, not who was going to win. Like many young teams with only a single star, the Hawks this season are sometimes more than the sum of their parts, and often less. Tonight it was less. 

Atlanta made only a third of their shots and only 26.7% of their 3’s. That was partly due to the Warriors sustaining their excellent defensive intensity and principles, and partly due to just being the worse team. The Dubs continue to help on drives with discipline instead of the overhelping that plagued them last year.

The Hawks entered the game 3rd in the league in pace, but that pace never seemed to pose a threat to the Warriors, who did not merely adopt Pace and Space, they were born in it, molded by it. That pace, and the Hawks atrocious shooting, allowed Golden State to pull ahead to the tune of a 31 point lead just after halftime.

The only time Atlanta truly threatened to make it a game was when they cut the margin down to 13 early in the 4th quarter, and Dub Nation was spooked by the shadow of the other recently blown 30 point leads from earlier this season. But history would not repeat itself as the Warriors finally hit a shot for the first time in 5 minutes and Steph and Draymond returned to calm things down.

As this was the first game in the certified post Melton era, it might be most instructive to view the game through the lens of the candidates to take Melton’s spot in the starting 5. 

Starting with the man who once again got the start, Lindy Waters III. Waters’ offensive game continues to impress. He’s shooting 41.7% from three and showed some nice touch on 2s in this game. He’d finish 4 for 9 (2 of 5 from 3) for 10 points, with 3 rebounds, a steal, and most critically for a role player, no turnovers. One small criticism of Lindy is the fact that twice in the past few games, he’s taken shots with his foot on the line that should easily be 3 pointers. 

For a shooter of his caliber it’s a little perplexing and hopefully something he can clean up going forwards.

On defense, Waters also did a nice job as the primary defender on Trae Young while on the court. Young was coming off a game in which the Kings doubled him aggressively to force him to be a passer, resulting in 7 points and 19 assists. The Warriors took a similar approach with Waters, GPII and sometimes even Draymond guarding Trae Young, and managed to hold him without a point until he made the second free throw with 5:41 left in the second quarter.

Brandin Podziemski had another frustrating night, going 1 for 6 from the field, only contributing 2 rebounds and generally looking out of sorts.

He continues to play hard on defense, but seems indecisive and out of rhythm on the other end. The one bright spot on his night came when he hit his only 3PT attempt, a good pull up look off the dribble.

Moody had a similarly forgettable night, going 1 for 5, missing all 3 of his 3s and failing to drive past any Hawk with the ball in his hands. 

Hield started hot and it first looked like he was going to continue his pattern of great nights following if his first shot goes in. He’d end up cooling off and finishing with a pedestrian 11-2-0 line on 4 of 11 shooting, so Kerr capped his minutes at 20.

GPII was by far the most effective of the aforementioned SGs, going 3 for 4 in 6 and half minutes on the court, with a dynamic dunk on a long-range Steph alley-oop.

But the real star of the game was also someone who has played shooting guard this season. Andrew Wiggins, who indeed started opening night at the 2-guard spot, was sensational! He led all scorers with a hyper efficient 27 points, finishing 12 for 17 on 50% from 3, and he could’ve had even more if he’d follow GPII’s advice and “Dunk the Ball!” on a few fast break one on ones.

In the halfcourt, Wiggs actually did attack the basket with determination, continuing to highlight the fact that he is the second most capable self-creator on the team. He looks focused, engaged — especially on help defense, comfortable and happy, and when he has good games the Warriors tend to win most of the time.

On the other side, the Hawks bring a cadre of young wings and good players, lead by this summer’s #1 overall pick Zaccharie Risacher. Yet it was another youngster in Dyson Daniels who received most of the attention on the Warriors’ broadcast. Daniels is the proud new owner of the best nickname in the NBA, “The Great Barrier Thief” and is coming off an absolute defensive heater. He’d put up at least 6 steals in 4 straight games before falling off against Sacramento with only 4 blocks and no steals. At Chase Center he once again created a ton of deflections, including one that lead to a classic Steph Curry Circus And-1, which was the highlight of the game. 

But the Warriors depth and system made Daniels a relative non-factor on defense, as he was forced to guard Steph around screens and switch when Steph set back picks. He’d be held without a steal or a block, a herculean accomplishment these days.

Maybe because of the pressure Daniels puts on ball handlers, Steph was again content to largely play off the ball until the stretch of the 4th quarter where he closed out the game. He’d finish with the quietest 23 point night you can imagine on sterling efficiency as we’ve come to expect.

The final important talking points from this game will be Johnathan Kuminga’s minutes, and if you'll indulge the minutiae, a new court and jerseys! On his bobblehead night Kuminga had an extremely strong first stint where he was doing everything in bunches but scoring. He rebounded with more passion than I can ever recall, was around the ball on defense and consistently looked to make the hit ahead pass. This offensive rebound in particular stood out.

But as discussed, Wiggins was having his best night of the year and that ate into Kuminga’s minutes. From an outside perspective, Kuminga only seeing the floor for 15 minutes had far less to do with his play or any mistake, but the success of his teammates. We’ll see if he gets back to being featured on the 2nd unit or if this is a sign of things to come. Either way I’m sure it will generate measured and rational discussion among the fanbase!

Lastly: The Warriors debuted their City Edition jersey and courts for this year, and it is one of my favorite aesthetic decisions they’ve made in years! This was what the SF Giants were hoping for when they released a Golden Gate and Fog-themed City Connect alternate jersey a few years ago. The colors mesh beautifully (though they are reminiscent of the Pelicans color scheme), the design pays tribute to an icon with understated elegance and it feels deeply connected to visual legacy of The City in a way many City Editions don’t. 

The court, mostly made with treated wood in-lieu of paint, was similarly easy on the eyes and featured some excellent details. 

Between this year’s throwback jerseys and these new City Editions, the Dub’s threads are the best they’ve been in a long long time.