Warriors stumble in LA as Kerr ejected vs Clippers

DNHQ After Dark is back as Duncan discusses the dramatics from the Dubs' most recent loss.

You may not know it by looking at The Website Formerly Known As Twitter, but it’s common courtesy that whenever your team loses a game due to some crazy, unfair, or unlikely series of events, you should play it off all cool-like. The stock phrases to look for here are “we shouldn’t have been in that situation anyway”, “it’ll come back around”, and “we wouldn’t care if our team won.” That’s being a polite, mature adult. Maybe there aren’t that many polite, mature adults in the internet sports space, but I’d like to think I’m there.

I’m partial to the second frame of reference — it’s the most true, generally you win as many games in crazy ways as you lose in crazy ways. The universe isn’t out to get your team specifically (unless you’re a Pelicans fan), so you’ll get even eventually. You’ll just forget about or justify the bad beats that benefit your team.

Now, the ones that go against you, you’ll remember forever. I’m still bitter about bad beats from the 2015 season, and A: that was literally a decade ago and B: we won the championship that year, so nothing could matter less. It’s just human psychology. When the world goes against you, you notice and shake your fist at the sky. When the world benefits you in some unfair way, you either deny it or justify it. 10,000 years of human civilization summed up.

On Monday, the Warriors lost a game through a sequence of unlikely and (in some cases) blatantly unfair events. The Warriors played well enough to win, led by an encouraging defensive performance and a better-than-it-looked-like offensive performance. Run that game 100 times and the Warriors probably win it 90% of the time. I’m a rational, mature sports fan. I know that doesn’t matter, that’s why you play the games, if you don’t like it, put the ball through the hoop more. But last night I couldn’t stop myself from just scrolling and making myself more and more mad about the course of the game.

How could the universe have done this? Why is everyone out to get the Golden State Warriors, clearly the most cursed and forsaken franchise in the association?

Before any of the dramatics happened, there was the statistical improbability. I think of three-point shots for most players like a batting average in baseball – if they’re reasonably open, they’re just gonna make their career averages. Everything else is luck. A .300 hitter will get a hit on 30% of at bats, a 37% shooter will make (ballpark) somewhere around 40-45% of their open threes. Some players are streaky and can get hot and those odds briefly tip, but most of that is just statistical variation, getting hot at the roulette wheel. Nothing to do with the player’s will or strategy.

The work of the offense comes in getting those open shots, turning a shot a player can make 25% of the time into a shot they can make 45% of the time. Getting mad about players shooting below their average on open threes is like getting mad at the wind. It’s gonna happen, you can’t prevent it.

The Warriors shoot 36% from three this season, 16th in the league, almost perfectly average. Shooting 24% from three, like they did this game, is not a big statistical variation. But when these threes were as open as they were, it feels like the Warriors did 99% of the work and just flubbed the part that actually matters.

The Warriors offense in the first half was as crisp and performant as could reasonably be expected. At least in the first half, it didn’t feel like the Clippers were playing especially great defense – Steph and Jimmy could collapse the defense at will, passing out to open shooters or an off-ball catch and shoot from Steph. It just didn’t matter because the roulette wheel wasn’t cooperating. When Steph Curry shoots 4-15, with the way the Warriors are constructed, it doesn’t matter what else is happening. When those shots were as open as they were, I’m not gonna say “Steph needs to play better”, I’m forced to say “Steph needs to do exactly what he’s been doing and wait for the wheel to turn up red”.Strike one against the universe.

The Warriors kept themselves in the game by playing some of their best defense of the season. Without James Harden and with Chris Paul on his couch somewhere, the Clippers don’t have a lot of players who can adequately dribble or initiate an offense. This led to a season high 18 steals for Golden State.

This was led by the ball-hawk wings on the team, Moses Moody and De’Anthony Melton, but everyone got in on it. Jimmy Butler intercepted passes to get four steals on the game, Steph got three, Draymond and Brandin Podziemski both managed two. The Warriors are elite at deflection and stripping balls, with Coach Stackhouse taking full advantage of whatever length is on the roster to take possession and run. The problem on Monday was that just as often as these turnovers led to open layups, they led to passing out the perimeter for a missed three.

In the third quarter, the Clippers almost ran away with the game. The Clippers were able to tighten their ballhandling and (especially) turn up their defensive intensity to push the lead to 14. The Warriors have struggled against Zubac in the past, and with the threes not falling, they were forced to drive in on him in an effort to get to the paint. The longer and stronger Clippers collapsed in without fouling much, resulting in blocked or changed shots at the rim.

The Warriors have no one capable of actually contending with rim protectors like Zubac and (in this period, at least) John Collins. This isn’t necessarily a crippling flaw – they know this, which is why they shoot the most threes in the league. If they’re consistently challenging big men at the rim, something has gone wrong. Their entire offense, both in the Jimmy Butler-led and Steph Curry-led configurations, is based around drawing the rim protector out of position to get an open three or an open cut. Forcing inside to directly face a seven-footer is a sign of desperation and devolution. You only see the Warriors try it when they don’t have anything else going and want to assert some control over the game.

With the game getting out of hand and Kerr searching for answers, he went for a reliable curveball in the rotation – Gui Santos minutes. Gui Santos turned this game around at the last possible moment where it could have mattered, and that should not be forgotten in the drama to come. Sometimes, in these games where the Warriors turn to Santos in desperation, the energy shift is palpable. I’ve been a Santos fan for the past few years, and often my first thought whenever the Warriors hit a cold spell is “why not more Santos minutes?”

I understand that he’s probably not a 30 minute per game player without taking away what makes him special. I don’t think anyone could play like Santos for 30 minutes per game. He reminds me of Alex Caruso: he comes in off the bench in full sprint, the most energetic person in the building, consistently outhustling and outspeeding elite athletes. Alex Caruso plays for 20-25 minutes per game because he physically can’t keep the effort up for more than that. Dropping a fresh Santos into a sleepy fourth quarter challenges everyone to keep up, and you can see it visibly affect and reenergize the players. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the best rebounder on the roster by a solid margin.

With the Warriors being powered by Santos’s energy (and shooting – he went 2-3 in the quarter, which may have been the best shooting performance of the night even in low volume), they quickly cut the lead to four. And this is where the universe really stuck its finger in it.

With 8:44 left in the game, Steph drove to the basket to take a midrange floater. John Collins grabbed at his off-arm as he drove, prompting Curry to pull the trigger on the shot to draw the foul. The ball arced through the air for about a second and half, and as the ball went through the net, referee Justin Van Duyne called the foul. In what feels like the tenth time this has happened this season, the referee called the foul on the drive and refused to give Steph continuation. Side out of bounds, no points awarded.

Was there continuation on the shot? To my eyes, John Collins does grab Steph slightly before he starts the upward motion, but he was clearly driving towards a floater or a layup. Gray area. The delayed whistle changes things – if the referee wasn’t sure, the most equitable solution would be… not to call the foul. Waiting until the ball swished through the net just served to piss everybody off and give the Clippers an advantage for grabbing a shooter. Two points erased at least, perhaps three if you were willing to grant continuation. Strike two against the universe.

The Warriors would fail to score on the following possession and then immediately give up a three-pointer to Collins, rubbing salt in the wound. On the very next Warriors possession, Gary Payton II would go up for a layup off the glass. John Collins would block it after it touched glass. This is not a gray area – this is objectively, and admitted in the referees’ post-game press pool, a goaltend and a missed call. Goaltends that are missed by the referees are not reviewable: you can overturn a goaltend incorrectly called on the floor, but once the referees miss it and play continues, there’s no way to correct the call.

Kerr, understandably upset by the sequence of events that had happened in the past 30 seconds of play, had to be held back by his coaching staff from fighting the entire refereeing crew and was ejected. This all added up to a four point swing after the two technical fouls. That’s 6-7 points the Warriors missed out during the crucial stretch of the game. Steph picked up a foul on the rebound after the missed goaltend, which will be important later. Strike three against the universe.

With the Warriors’ momentum stopped in its tracks and the Clippers’ lead pushed back up to 11, the only thing that could save the Warriors would be some classic Steph Curry heroics. And for a moment, Steph obliged. Despite being desperately cold for most of the game, with the pressure turned up and white hot rage pumping through his veins, Steph would come back in after his mid-quarter rest and start to lead a last-minute comeback, scoring eight points in one minute. The Warriors were within one with less than a minute to play and a hot Steph. Unfortunately, that Steph foul that should have never been proved to be the difference. With 45 seconds left in the game, he fought with Zubac for a rebound (an extremely dumb move, in my view) and was called for his sixth foul. With the game on the line, he was benched.

So the Warriors would be down one with 7 seconds to play and Terry Stotts drawing up the potential game winning play. The Warriors got essentially what they wanted – a close Jimmy Butler fadeaway jumper with three Warriors in great position to crash the glass for a putback. The only problem was that Jimmy pulled the string short, sending the resulting airball directly into the waiting hands of the Clippers’ defense. Based on where the Warriors were, they have a decent chance of tipping that ball in if it even touches the rim. But it didn’t, and that was game. Strike four against the universe?

I don’t know what you even take away from this loss. The Warriors played well enough to win, but evidently not well enough to weather the universe taking its swings. We’ve been on the other side of that before, I’m sure. What is the Rockets going 0-27 if not that? But it’s an especially tough ask to have to win a game by seven to avoid losing it. I want to be high-minded about it, to zen out about every team having a game like this. But then I think about Steve Kerr trying to fight every referee and I can’t help but feel the same. I get it Steve. I really do.