Decided to compare this game to my pre-game predictions to see how the Dubs did vs. (slightly tongue-in-cheek) expectations after having some time to settle on it.
> My prediction: Steph gets in foul trouble and only goes for 32 in 25 minutes (including some 4th quarter not-quite-garbage-time minutes to help him get his conditioning back). No one else on the W's scores 20+, Wiseman and maybe Chriss foul out, Durant shoots 12/12 on FTs, and and we have 5+ minutes of garbage time. Green gets a technical from the bench and Twitter demands we trade him for either Giannis or Dort. (On Facebook, people argue we should waive Wiggins to avoid the luxury tax even though that doesn't technically work.) Meanwhile, LGW is excited because Mulder shoots 3/3 on 3's in garbage time, Wanamaker gets a clean steal on KD, and Damion Lee is somehow the only player on Golden State with a positive +/- at +8.
1. OK, nobody got in foul trouble and there was no technical, so that part wasn't as bad as I worried. I won't evaluate my predictions about what people on social media were saying.
2. Steph played worse than I'd hoped (20 points in 30 minutes on 33% from the field)
3. True, nobody else on the Dubs scored 20+ (Wiseman had 19)
4. Durant shot 7/7 on FTs. I'll mark this as correctly predicted after adjusting for an overall less foul-happy game than I'd expected.
5. We sure did have "5+" minutes of garbage time.
6. I didn't really have a specific prediction for Wiggins, but clearly I wasn't expecting him to have a career night and he sure didn't (except maybe in a negative sense)
7. Mulder went 3/3 from the field including 2/2 from 3 during a 6-minute stint in garbage time. So, pretty close.
8. No steals from Wanamaker, though he was staring down one of the Nets who turned the ball over all on his own accord. And I think Looney stole it from KD at one point?
9. Damion Lee did in fact have exactly +8 in the box score, but Wanamaker was +1 and Mulder +9 so Lee wasn't the only guy.
Honestly most of my predictions were either right on the money or pretty damn close and the major things I got wrong were Steph was cold and the refs weren't whistle-happy. In retrospect things I didn't expect were the Nets opening the game white-hot and Oubre and Wiggins having realllly bad nights overall.
“Is isolation ball the answer to Golden State's slow start? Or just a drubbing at the hands of a superior team?”
(C.) A one-game sample of a partial team coming off a laughably abbreviated training camp and a 3,000-mile flight to a different time zone to face a stacked veteran team tells us *nothing* about the team we didn’t know going into the game.
Well, except that Wiseman is going to be a hall of famer. :-)
I had a good Buddy from Occidental who died much too young. Cute town.
Many good comments from the posters below. I also disagree that the Jackson method should be incorporated. Isos are fine when the situation calls for it, but this system of Kerr's is meant to run, gun, pass, and find that open shooter. The problem we saw in the opener was no one was hitting their shots including Curry and the passing, except for Curry's, was not a factor. No chemistry, no execution, no fall back game plan to get the team in sync and get some easy baskets. Draymond will help but as mentioned, he won't be able to make sure that players can execute their shots and assignments.
Using the template that Kerr has set up without having the talent to execute it is essentially the problem. How do you make it work? Having the talent to understand and execute it is essential. When you talk about spot up shooters, Klay Thompson is the definition of it. The lack of an effective bench is also an issue. This I put squarely on Myers as not finding the necessary players to bolster the team. Way too many useless players. Paschall is not a run and gun player or spot up shooter. He is a role player who excels at iso to the basket. He is not even athletic or an elite rebounder. He's good at taking it to the basket. Why spend so much time on players that need to be taught a new way of playing from the getgo? Poole is not a ball handler or PG. He was brought in for his shooting but has failed to deliver it. He has little D. The lack of D from many of the bench players is a fault of their training and of Myers not doing his due D over the last few years. Maybe they got cocky thinking nothing could stop them. Easy to do with a team like the Warriors and the hype that the players begin believing. This is not the same team as 2015. Curry can't play in a vacuum. He needs teammates who understand him and the system and can execute their shooting and roles both on O and D.
We’re gonna be hovering around the .500 mark as a team this year so it means we’ll lose plenty of them. Good thing is we’ll keep our 2021 first rounder. Losing in the early going is much preferred than later on when we’re close to the playoffs/playins. But we’re expected to be losing and most times it’ll be against contending teams, especially since we haven’t had time to gel yet as a team.
This team only needs to improve two things to succeed: defense, and offense. 😝
On defense, the biggest flaws in game 1 were teamwork, not individual. Guys need to know when to switch and when not, when to help off their guy and when to stick with him, make sure they communicate with each other to make this stuff clear in the moment. Having Draymond back will help there, but it's also just a matter of chemistry and time. I don't think dudes getting burned individually is a major problem, so you wouldn't need to change out the actual players unless someone is just not getting it. That said, if you want to do better now, you have to give more minutes to guys who are further along or more disciplined in this—JTA over Paschall, for example, a change Kerr already made at halftime against the Nets.
On offense, there were a lot of flaws, but the two biggest were sloppy turnovers and actually just converting on good looks. The shooting should improve some with just plain luck, but I think it points to a need for rotation changes, maybe even roster changes. Better schemes could create more good looks, but you need to convert those looks into points at a respectable rate, and that is something last year's team never did, nor so in this year's preseason/game 1. Mulder & Lee getting more minutes could really help here.
No. And no. No, Kerr shouldn't coach more like Mark Jackson and no, iso ball is not the answer. The Warriors have won it all a lot in the last few years. That's created problems (drafting late, high salaries for superstars) that require getting more from less talent, especially with Klay out and Draymond injured. Curry can't be expected to defeat schemes designed to constrain him using simple counters, such as PNR. The best way to do that is to optimize the system the players play in, which includes quickly making the right decisions intuitively. To achieve that result, players must play, must encounter different sorts of challenges and must be given the proper tools to develop. One week of training camp and a couple of warm-up games is not sufficient. Kerr probably also can't run his full system with this bunch either. He'll have to simplify. But a five-man system, not a two man game.
The key to offensive success is to avoid the halfcourt and get out in transition, as Kerr has said. Kerr wants them to get stops in order to run, but I think this might be a Nellieball "run after made baskets" type of team. Wiggins and Oubre are natural transition players with their athleticism. Wiseman might be a long way from being a good player, but his speed/athleticism is already elite for his position and taking advantage of it would be the best way to make him playable.
However, I think the death of the halfcourt motion offense has been a bit exaggerated. The lack of shooting is definitely a severe flaw, so it won't ever be as good as it was, I agree. It is a distant second to the transition attack. But they do have the BBIQ to run it imo, his name is Draymond. No one else can be the "passing hub" out of the post, so with him out it looks a lot worse. Wiggins and Oubre might not be high BBIQ players but they are natural cutters. Curry is still Jupiter with his gravity. Looney has a lot of experience screening for Curry. Wiseman looked generally contact averse in his debut which isn't great for screen setting, but hopefully they can coach him into embracing contact...? Hopefully Kerr can tweak the motion offense to incorporate his lob threat (although I have to admit I'm slightly worried about his hands).
If Wiseman pans out as a pick and roll partner, a halfcourt offense based around a Curry/Wiseman pick and roll could be devastating. But he's not there yet, not sure if he'll be this season. So the motion offense will do for now, with a heavy dosage of Curry/Draymond pick and roll thrown in during crunch time.
The only long term concern about the Nets game was the giving up on defense after getting down early. The difference between the Lakers response to getting down early and the Warriors was a stark reminder which team now actually has the winning culture. The Warriors need to back up their claim to a winning culture with winning habits whether the shots are falling or not ASAP. See the W’s vs Blazers wcf series to see the appropriate response to getting down early if you truly have a winning culture. And then stop getting in big holes early.
I hated what we saw vs the Nets, although I expected something like it. This season was planned around having Klay, and of course Dray has been absent. But let's give it some time, let Dray get back, and then see what we have. It's not just what Dray does on the court; his BB IQ is off the charts, and once he gets out there and gets a feel for the current squad, I bet he'll tell the coaches if he thinks the formula needs to change. As for "But what if the biggest change was that the core of Curry, Thompson, and Green just happened to take a huge career leap that coincided with Kerr taking over the coaching gig?" How soon we forget! Mark Jackson did a fine job emphasizing defense and a winning mentality, and he got the turnaround rolling. But his offense was a chaotic mess, and he created an "us vs them" tone that included Warriors management in "them." There's a reason he hasn't gotten another head coaching gig. Sure, Kerr inherited the stars (other than KD later), but he and his staff also supplied the offense and a more positive overall tone. Just shrugging off his accomplishments makes no sense to me.
Isoball was a failed 20 year experiment in the NBA that destroyed the USA’s ability to win world championships or Olympic competitions. It ruined the NBA and almost derailed LeBron from ever becoming his best self. The Warriors killed isoball (for any real contenders) and I would rather see them get rid of every player on the roster that even hints isoball might be a good idea, than see them even try to win an extra game through that incompetent, anti-math, anti-team crap the NBA put on the court between Jordan and Curry.
Decided to compare this game to my pre-game predictions to see how the Dubs did vs. (slightly tongue-in-cheek) expectations after having some time to settle on it.
> My prediction: Steph gets in foul trouble and only goes for 32 in 25 minutes (including some 4th quarter not-quite-garbage-time minutes to help him get his conditioning back). No one else on the W's scores 20+, Wiseman and maybe Chriss foul out, Durant shoots 12/12 on FTs, and and we have 5+ minutes of garbage time. Green gets a technical from the bench and Twitter demands we trade him for either Giannis or Dort. (On Facebook, people argue we should waive Wiggins to avoid the luxury tax even though that doesn't technically work.) Meanwhile, LGW is excited because Mulder shoots 3/3 on 3's in garbage time, Wanamaker gets a clean steal on KD, and Damion Lee is somehow the only player on Golden State with a positive +/- at +8.
1. OK, nobody got in foul trouble and there was no technical, so that part wasn't as bad as I worried. I won't evaluate my predictions about what people on social media were saying.
2. Steph played worse than I'd hoped (20 points in 30 minutes on 33% from the field)
3. True, nobody else on the Dubs scored 20+ (Wiseman had 19)
4. Durant shot 7/7 on FTs. I'll mark this as correctly predicted after adjusting for an overall less foul-happy game than I'd expected.
5. We sure did have "5+" minutes of garbage time.
6. I didn't really have a specific prediction for Wiggins, but clearly I wasn't expecting him to have a career night and he sure didn't (except maybe in a negative sense)
7. Mulder went 3/3 from the field including 2/2 from 3 during a 6-minute stint in garbage time. So, pretty close.
8. No steals from Wanamaker, though he was staring down one of the Nets who turned the ball over all on his own accord. And I think Looney stole it from KD at one point?
9. Damion Lee did in fact have exactly +8 in the box score, but Wanamaker was +1 and Mulder +9 so Lee wasn't the only guy.
Honestly most of my predictions were either right on the money or pretty damn close and the major things I got wrong were Steph was cold and the refs weren't whistle-happy. In retrospect things I didn't expect were the Nets opening the game white-hot and Oubre and Wiggins having realllly bad nights overall.
“Is isolation ball the answer to Golden State's slow start? Or just a drubbing at the hands of a superior team?”
(C.) A one-game sample of a partial team coming off a laughably abbreviated training camp and a 3,000-mile flight to a different time zone to face a stacked veteran team tells us *nothing* about the team we didn’t know going into the game.
Well, except that Wiseman is going to be a hall of famer. :-)
3D,
I had a good Buddy from Occidental who died much too young. Cute town.
Many good comments from the posters below. I also disagree that the Jackson method should be incorporated. Isos are fine when the situation calls for it, but this system of Kerr's is meant to run, gun, pass, and find that open shooter. The problem we saw in the opener was no one was hitting their shots including Curry and the passing, except for Curry's, was not a factor. No chemistry, no execution, no fall back game plan to get the team in sync and get some easy baskets. Draymond will help but as mentioned, he won't be able to make sure that players can execute their shots and assignments.
Using the template that Kerr has set up without having the talent to execute it is essentially the problem. How do you make it work? Having the talent to understand and execute it is essential. When you talk about spot up shooters, Klay Thompson is the definition of it. The lack of an effective bench is also an issue. This I put squarely on Myers as not finding the necessary players to bolster the team. Way too many useless players. Paschall is not a run and gun player or spot up shooter. He is a role player who excels at iso to the basket. He is not even athletic or an elite rebounder. He's good at taking it to the basket. Why spend so much time on players that need to be taught a new way of playing from the getgo? Poole is not a ball handler or PG. He was brought in for his shooting but has failed to deliver it. He has little D. The lack of D from many of the bench players is a fault of their training and of Myers not doing his due D over the last few years. Maybe they got cocky thinking nothing could stop them. Easy to do with a team like the Warriors and the hype that the players begin believing. This is not the same team as 2015. Curry can't play in a vacuum. He needs teammates who understand him and the system and can execute their shooting and roles both on O and D.
To the question on the floor - wait.
Geez, fellas; first give it ten games with Draymond before taking a wrench to it.
Besides, I believe we're tied with the Lakers and Bucks so far.
(For another day, at least...)
;)
You know you're doomed when Andrew Wiggins taking the 2nd most shots is deemed normal
We’re gonna be hovering around the .500 mark as a team this year so it means we’ll lose plenty of them. Good thing is we’ll keep our 2021 first rounder. Losing in the early going is much preferred than later on when we’re close to the playoffs/playins. But we’re expected to be losing and most times it’ll be against contending teams, especially since we haven’t had time to gel yet as a team.
This team only needs to improve two things to succeed: defense, and offense. 😝
On defense, the biggest flaws in game 1 were teamwork, not individual. Guys need to know when to switch and when not, when to help off their guy and when to stick with him, make sure they communicate with each other to make this stuff clear in the moment. Having Draymond back will help there, but it's also just a matter of chemistry and time. I don't think dudes getting burned individually is a major problem, so you wouldn't need to change out the actual players unless someone is just not getting it. That said, if you want to do better now, you have to give more minutes to guys who are further along or more disciplined in this—JTA over Paschall, for example, a change Kerr already made at halftime against the Nets.
On offense, there were a lot of flaws, but the two biggest were sloppy turnovers and actually just converting on good looks. The shooting should improve some with just plain luck, but I think it points to a need for rotation changes, maybe even roster changes. Better schemes could create more good looks, but you need to convert those looks into points at a respectable rate, and that is something last year's team never did, nor so in this year's preseason/game 1. Mulder & Lee getting more minutes could really help here.
No. And no. No, Kerr shouldn't coach more like Mark Jackson and no, iso ball is not the answer. The Warriors have won it all a lot in the last few years. That's created problems (drafting late, high salaries for superstars) that require getting more from less talent, especially with Klay out and Draymond injured. Curry can't be expected to defeat schemes designed to constrain him using simple counters, such as PNR. The best way to do that is to optimize the system the players play in, which includes quickly making the right decisions intuitively. To achieve that result, players must play, must encounter different sorts of challenges and must be given the proper tools to develop. One week of training camp and a couple of warm-up games is not sufficient. Kerr probably also can't run his full system with this bunch either. He'll have to simplify. But a five-man system, not a two man game.
The key to offensive success is to avoid the halfcourt and get out in transition, as Kerr has said. Kerr wants them to get stops in order to run, but I think this might be a Nellieball "run after made baskets" type of team. Wiggins and Oubre are natural transition players with their athleticism. Wiseman might be a long way from being a good player, but his speed/athleticism is already elite for his position and taking advantage of it would be the best way to make him playable.
However, I think the death of the halfcourt motion offense has been a bit exaggerated. The lack of shooting is definitely a severe flaw, so it won't ever be as good as it was, I agree. It is a distant second to the transition attack. But they do have the BBIQ to run it imo, his name is Draymond. No one else can be the "passing hub" out of the post, so with him out it looks a lot worse. Wiggins and Oubre might not be high BBIQ players but they are natural cutters. Curry is still Jupiter with his gravity. Looney has a lot of experience screening for Curry. Wiseman looked generally contact averse in his debut which isn't great for screen setting, but hopefully they can coach him into embracing contact...? Hopefully Kerr can tweak the motion offense to incorporate his lob threat (although I have to admit I'm slightly worried about his hands).
If Wiseman pans out as a pick and roll partner, a halfcourt offense based around a Curry/Wiseman pick and roll could be devastating. But he's not there yet, not sure if he'll be this season. So the motion offense will do for now, with a heavy dosage of Curry/Draymond pick and roll thrown in during crunch time.
The only long term concern about the Nets game was the giving up on defense after getting down early. The difference between the Lakers response to getting down early and the Warriors was a stark reminder which team now actually has the winning culture. The Warriors need to back up their claim to a winning culture with winning habits whether the shots are falling or not ASAP. See the W’s vs Blazers wcf series to see the appropriate response to getting down early if you truly have a winning culture. And then stop getting in big holes early.
I hated what we saw vs the Nets, although I expected something like it. This season was planned around having Klay, and of course Dray has been absent. But let's give it some time, let Dray get back, and then see what we have. It's not just what Dray does on the court; his BB IQ is off the charts, and once he gets out there and gets a feel for the current squad, I bet he'll tell the coaches if he thinks the formula needs to change. As for "But what if the biggest change was that the core of Curry, Thompson, and Green just happened to take a huge career leap that coincided with Kerr taking over the coaching gig?" How soon we forget! Mark Jackson did a fine job emphasizing defense and a winning mentality, and he got the turnaround rolling. But his offense was a chaotic mess, and he created an "us vs them" tone that included Warriors management in "them." There's a reason he hasn't gotten another head coaching gig. Sure, Kerr inherited the stars (other than KD later), but he and his staff also supplied the offense and a more positive overall tone. Just shrugging off his accomplishments makes no sense to me.
Just some simple thoughts on the matter:
Isoball was a failed 20 year experiment in the NBA that destroyed the USA’s ability to win world championships or Olympic competitions. It ruined the NBA and almost derailed LeBron from ever becoming his best self. The Warriors killed isoball (for any real contenders) and I would rather see them get rid of every player on the roster that even hints isoball might be a good idea, than see them even try to win an extra game through that incompetent, anti-math, anti-team crap the NBA put on the court between Jordan and Curry.
More minutes for Mulder, Lee and Chriss should be helpful.