Warriors get a business casual win in front of a business casual crowd over visiting Bucks

DNHQ After Dark New Year Edition: Golden State has a prime opportunity in front of them.

Basketball aphorisms are a way of life in the NBA and the verbal seasoning of television broadcasts across the league. “Ball don’t lie.” “Hand down, Man Down.” Or “You reach, I teach,” as referenced last night by one of the best color commentators in the game, the Buck’s Marques Johnsons. Dub Nation has its own special history with truisms, except in the Bay we know them as part of the sacred text called The Book of Barnett (“Leapers Like to Leap,” “Airballs go to the offense,” etc.).

That tradition is carried on by Jim’s old partner Bob Fitzgerald to this day, though perhaps to less endearing effect because he cites notions like, “The first home game after a road trip is like another road game,” ad nauseam, and they feel more like excuses or lectures than a gentle means of educating the audience. Like it or not however, sometimes one of those sayings really does prove true and define an entire game. Last night against Milwaukee, one of Fitz’s favorites summed up the game pretty succinctly: “Role players play better at home.” Luckily for Golden State, they were taking on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Bucks in the friendly confines of Chase Center, and their role players came to play, leading to a relatively comfortable 120-113 win.

As fans and observers alike have noted all season, the play from the Warriors two stars has been consistently excellent, so their record swings on the production of every other player on the roster. Wednesday was no different. Stephen Curry scored 31 points with 7 assists on 57% shooting, hit a Night Night shot to ice the game and created a worthy sequel to THAT sequence against the Clippers (at the same end of the court no less), while Jimmy Butler got to the line 9 times on his way to 21 points.

But the heroes of the game were finally the unheralded, underproducing elements of the team. And that started with Quinten Post: the most consistently positive role player this season had himself another quietly impactful game. Facing one of the most physically imposing players in league history it felt like he made more shots at the basket than he has all season combined. He even registered a strong dunk in transition, driving right past Giannis for a nice layup early in the game in a near eclipse-level rarity:

Even with a strength and agility mismatch, Giannis repeatedly declined to drive right at Post, a testament to QP’s serious improvement on the defensive end of the floor.

Another early highlight was Gui Santos. After his energy nearly sparked a 4th quarter comeback in LA last game and with GPII sidelined, Santos was rewarded with minutes early in the 1st quarter and he was once again a game changer. Gui’s effort is always unquestionable and uplifting, but his intelligence deserves real praise as well. He has excellent feel for where to be for rebounds, when he should pass (he never ignores an open Steph Curry) and he makes defensive rotations with the commitment and foresight of a much more highly regarded player. On this help, he covers a lot of ground and has the size to impact a shot at the rim, bothering a layup into a miss.

Maybe the most important thing Gui does (as evidenced above) is play with speed, both mentally and physically. Deceptively, he has some of the fastest foot speed on the team, and he augments this by reacting quickly to everything around him. While, as Sam Esfandiari of the Light Years podcast noted last week on Twitter, Gary Payton II “is their best 6-7 wing,” because he can finish at the rim, Santos should also get more minutes because he can help alleviate the extreme size deficiency and he’s a much better outside shooter.

Transitioning to the more besieged members of the Dubs, Brandin Podziemski was 1-of-5, but ended the night with a positive 19 +/- by accruing six rebounds and four assists with zero turnovers; flying around on defense. But the performances that truly changed the game came from beyond the arc.

Moses Moody, De’Anthony Melton and Al Horford combined to go 10/19 from deep. Melton in particular was the star of the show: hitting five threes, scoring 22 points, creating off the dribble and finally starting to resemble the kind of player everyone thought he could be for Golden State. That’s someone who’s broad skillset can fill in weaknesses and elevate the best lineups to actually compete with the best in the NBA.

Admittedly the Bucks are not that, but they have a singular talent who can overwhelm all other facts in any given game, and they shocked the Warriors even without their MVP earlier in the season. This time, instead of Ryan Rollins dominating to a Milwaukee victory, the shot making by Melton and Horford in particular kept the Bucks at arms length.

It is impossible to know exactly to where the Warriors role players’ offensive renaissance should be attributed, be it positive regression after devastating slumps or just home cooking, but either way Golden State will gladly take the kind of night they got from the role players every single time out. Another possibility is that Steve Kerr’s rotations last night felt more balanced, stable and decisive than they have all year. Even while playing 10 men, everyone had enough possessions to get a rhythm and contribute in a meaningful way. This was made simpler without GPII, but Steve still made the right choices about who to play and when, and it may have paid dividends.

Another contributing factor might have been the offensive game plan. For years the loudest outcry from fans exasperated by motion offense possessions which never gained traction was a demand for more Steph Curry Pick and Roll. Though Kerr’s philosophy about ball movement and the democratization of the offense allowing role players to be more ready to shoot remains salient, it goes without saying that creating open shots has been the biggest struggle of the team this year. Lately, in what appears to be a conscious decision, Kerr has obliged his critics and responded to this struggle by using Steph’s gravity to create advantages in the most direct way possible, on the ball.

Against both the Clippers and Bucks the Dubs ran a metric ton of ball screens. In L.A. it was mostly GPII rolling to athletic finishes at the rim. Without GPII on Wednesday, an entire third of the Warriors roster was involved as a roll man after screening for Steph. (In Podz’s case it was a split cut off the ball, but that’s splitting hairs and the result was still the same: crisp execution and shot making in a 4-on-3 situation.)

Here is a collection of five different roll men delivering on Steph’s ability to draw two:

The Bucks defense is about league average — 18th in the NBA by defensive rating (which includes a lot of games without former DPOY Giannis) — and gave a professional effort, but doesn’t have the sort of length that teams like Orlando, Toronto, OKC and others have used to trap Steph and the rest of the Warriors into submission.

Instead, they resembled the worst aspects of the Warriors defense at times this year: forced into rotations by penetration and leaving shooters wide open. As it says in Chapter 75 of The Book of Barnett, eventually role players get their chance and for once it was the Warriors reserves paying off the shot creation and knocking down those open looks.

In direct contrast, Milwaukee’s role players struggled mightily from downtown in the first half. After the Bucks briefly tied the game early in the 2nd quarter, the Warriors led the entire rest of the way. Milwaukee did threaten immediately after halftime and again at the end of the 4th as their outside shots finally started falling as they slowly eroded the Warriors 17 point lead. But they largely looked the part of an under talented team playing on the road and the ultimate outcome felt inevitable.

By the end of the night the Bucks actually outshot Golden State, finishing an impressive 54% from the field and 43% from 3PT range. The difference came everywhere else on the stat sheet, as the Dubs reversed every single negative trend from the rest of the season: committing fewer turnovers, shooting more free throws and stealing more offensive boards.

And even though Giannis would end up with 34 points and 10 rebounds, it wasn’t the kind of performance that makes the Dubs feel like Lilliputians or a team of 3rd graders trying to take on grown men. Draymond Green deserves immense credit for that, as he matched Giannis’ minutes and prevented him from completely taking over the game. Dray also deserves credit for scoring 14 points while racking up a 7:1 assist to turnover ratio.

Even with Draymond looking like a changed man; the Greek Freak in the building, Steph displaying some classic wizardry; the role players lighting it up; and apparently a fistfight breaking out in the stands; the Chase Center crowd’s reaction on the broadcast to a very nice win seemed relatively muted until Steph hit the dagger.

Perhaps it was a response to the past few seasons of mediocrity. Perhaps it just the new San Francisco crowd. Or, perhaps it was the lack of drama in this contest. But it was a reminder of a wise phrase that does not come from Book of Barnett but should have: “We didn’t know how good we had it!”.

Hopefully the role players continue to show up and help the tail end of this “fading dynasty” continue to fade slowly. With a ton more games at home in January, the chance is there, and in the words of Jim: