Steph Masterclass Can’t Overcome Roster Flaws, Blazers Beat Warriors Yet Again

Our guy Duncan is here to give you the stone cold truth about the Warriors after last night's wacky loss.

Steph Curry missed five games after his quad contusion, and in that time, the vibes surrounding the team seemed to change drastically. When the Warriors blew a big lead versus the Rockets the day before Thanksgiving, the preeminent attitude was that the Warriors were insolvably, inescapably mid – .500 or thereabouts, dependent on Curry to save them. When I recapped the game against the Rockets, I fully expected the Warriors to lose every game during Steph’s absence and have to go on a wild winning streak when he returned to reapproach respectability. Draymond’s foot injury and personal time off made the situation even more dire. It would all be up to the role players.

The Warriors proved my lack of faith wrong, going 3-2 during his time off, with the two losses being respectable moral victories versus the Philadelphia 76ers (should have put that game away, but the massive comeback was encouraging) and the Oklahoma City Thunder (which the outclassed Warriors had no business hanging around, so full moral victory points awarded).

The best win of the season, a wire-to-wire victory versus Cleveland, showed off a new formula in Steph’s absence – the reliance on hustle players who Make The Right Play to scrounge up just enough offense in combination with the suddenly-elite defense to pull off narrow victories. Quinten Post emerged as a quality defender (#5 in defensive net rating going into yesterday’s game, although defensive net rating is more of a team stat and I don’t think he’s ever been quite that good). The world fell in love with Pat Spencer, a complete competitive demon that could actually run a simple pick-and-roll with enough efficiency to make the Stephless offense resemble a normal team. Jonathan Kuminga’s ongoing slump led to his complete ouster from the rotation in favor of Gui Santos, Trayce Jackson-Davis, and a returned De’Anthony Melton.

The Warriors found a formula that was working in the absence of Steph. So with five consecutive days off, the question became – how do you reintegrate Steph into a machine that was humming along quite well for the first time since October?

The answer Steve Kerr settled on first was a fairly drastic one. Steph was essentially moved to the off-guard position, starting Pat Spencer at the point and letting him hold the ball and initiate the offense while Steph runs around as a shooting guard. Patsanity was a national story and the most fun part of the season so far, but I did not expect this!

I figured Spencer’s emergence would lead to him taking the backup point guard duties away from Brandin Podziemski, a solid 16-18 minutes per game role that would let the Warriors survive the non-Steph minutes with a respectable offense. Instead, Kerr elected to rebuild the whole offense around Spencer’s skills, pushing him closer to 30 minutes and starting the two small guards in the backcourt. This is one way to reintegrate Steph – to actually integrate him, to keep what was working about this group virtually the same while supercharging the off-guard position.

This, however, didn’t quite work. The wing-heavy, athletic, and tall Timberwolves were able to dominate the smaller Warriors. Quinten Post, despite being a legit 7-footer with vastly improved defensive instincts, was completely unable to keep Rudy Gobert off the glass with his pitiful vertical athleticism (I love Post, who is a true starting-calibur center, but he was bottom five in the 2024 draft combine in vertical leap. At age 25, that’s not improving). The Warriors put up a fight, keeping it close and counterpunching, but the scrappy band of garbage-heap players alongside Steph started showing their flaws.

On Sunday night, the Warriors would face an extremely similar team. The Blazers, while being worse than the Timberwolves, are constructed the same way. Squint at Deni Avdija and you’ll see Julius Randle with a jump shot.

The athletic defensive wings are there, just a little worse. Jaden McDaniels and Jerami Grant, Donovan Clingan and Rudy Gobert… it’s a step down, but it’s still a team that is built to expose the Warriors’ flaws and give them heartburn. Which is why it makes sense that the team had dropped two previous games in embarrassing fashion. The Warriors would drastically react to what failed to work against the Timberwolves like it was a Game 1 playoff series blowout.

With the experiment in reintegrating Steph with the Pat Spencer experience deemed a failure, Kerr immediately pivoted back to where he was comfortable – starting Moody, who had been at the fringes of the rotation during the Warriors’ all-too-brief hot streak. This is the other way of reintegrating Steph and Draymond. There would still be a little Pat Spencer in there, but the only real difference between this and the rotation of two weeks ago would be Melton in for his 20 minutes at the expense of GP2 and Will Richard, and Kuminga’s continued exile.

The brief moment of hope reduced to quick cameos. The Warriors would go away from what had briefly worked in favor of a style that had worked last year but had led them back to mediocrity this year. If the question was “how do you reintegrate Steph into a machine that was working fine”, the answer Kerr settled on here was “deconstruct the machine entirely”.

Forcing Steph to be ball-dominant again had its uses, as Steph would put together one of the best games of the season, maybe one of the best games of his career. The inexperienced Blazers squad simply could not keep with him, and kept giving him the airspace to get his shot off. The result was a remarkably efficient shooting night for the second consecutive game, one of those fireworks displays that remind you that Steph is still at the top of his game, just as good as he’s ever been, a complete superstar in a league of stars. Back against the wall, when it mattered, he scored 21 points in the fourth to keep the team afloat and give the Warriors a shot to win.

The rest of the team could not match his excellence. In this frustrating season, the blame goes to the young players whenever the team squanders a Steph masterclass. I guess you could blame Kuminga for evidently not being good enough to play at all, but from the rest of the role players, that’s not what I saw.

Brandin Podziemski had one of the best games of a rough season, scoring 12, playing hard, and stuffing the stat sheet. Quinten Post only played 19 minutes after piling up 4 quick fouls (Kerr evidently did not think he could hang with the more-athletic Blazers at all after his lost battle against Gobert, and he only had a brief cameo in the 4th), but contributed 11 points on efficient shooting and battled for rebounds. He was the only player who played significant minutes with a positive +/-. Moody was overmatched against quick guards and was invisible at times, but that’s baked in, we know who he is. The role players (with a few exceptions) played well enough to win, still looking improved after their Stephless hot streak.

Instead, the blame goes to the supposedly dependable veterans who generally get the benefit of the doubt. Jimmy Butler was virtually invisible for much of the game. He pounced on a few lazy passes for steals and easy points, but in the half-court he often would not touch the ball. Post-game, Kerr took the blame for Butler’s passivity, saying that he’s “got to find a way to get him in the groove of the game”, to get him touches and more consistent control of the offense. Whoever is to blame, the Jimmy Butler cloak of invisibility is forcing Steph to keep having these supernova games for the team to remain competitive. Steph is wonderful, but no one can do it alone.

Getting the ball in Butler’s hands is essential to the success of the team, because last night much of the primary ball-handling would go to Draymond Green. Green’s statline of 14/7/8 obscures what was, to my eye, a miserable disaster of a night. Draymond has always been a player that gives and takes, plays the edge. Most of the time what he contributes outweighs the cost. Too often this season, Draymond has not been able to find that edge. His passing is completely off-target and out of control, and while the emotional regulation is not as bad as it was in 2023, it is always a problem when the performance doesn’t back it up. Look at this turnover and his reaction during the fast break:

Defensive intensity usually makes up for Draymond’s sketchy ball-handling. However: the key turning point of the game in the fourth quarter, where it became clear that even Steph heroics wouldn’t save the Warriors, was a sequence where the Warriors left Jerami Grant completely open for three on two consecutive fast breaks to erase a 10-point lead. Watch the activity here

Draymond would end with eight turnovers and a team-low -12. Don’t let the semi-hot three point shooting leading to a high point total distract from that. This level of play is unacceptable for a key player and veteran who is trusted with control of the offense, and it hasn’t been the only time this year. Draymond as an offensive hub was a weapon that was key to the Warriors’ identity for a decade. But this isn’t the same Warriors, and this isn’t the same Draymond. If the offensive responsibility is leading to the inability to give effort on defense, maybe he should learn to park himself in a corner and let other people pass.

Last week, the Warriors had stumbled upon something that looked like it was working. This week, we’re right back where we started, a mediocre team playing mediocre basketball despite having a basketball cheat code on the team. Everyone needs to be looked at as a responsible party. There’s exactly one blameless player who is consistently doing everything he can to win. Everyone else needs a severe soul-searching session, creative solutions, changes. After this level of effort and performance, no one is safe.