Kevin O'Connor's latest power rankings (TheRinger) have the Warriors at 9th, which... well, that's probably higher than I'd rank them! So I think we can call that "bullish". It is notable that these rankings were posted >before< the Lakers game:
"Curry has put up a rate of 40.7 points per 36 minutes in the fourth quarter, the best in the NBA. He's 11-of-21 (52.4 percent) in fourth-quarter two-point field goals and 9-of-20 from 3-point range (45.0 percent). If the game is coming down to the wire, he's the last person opposing teams want to see at the line, as he's a perfect 19-of-19 on fourth-quarter free throws. "
(Of course, using dumb stats like "in the fourth quarter" might show something like this. But I bet if you look at shots in the last 19.9 seconds of games on the road when down by four points on a Thursday, Steph is DEAD LAST in the NBA and totally unclutch!)
Since I watched the game a bit late (League Pass wasn't loading for me yesterday!) I'll drop my thoughts on the game here.
The Warriors came out intentionally pushing the pace hard; the Lakers played fast too but it felt like they were getting caught up in it rather than pushing intentionally. I wonder if that was an intentional strategy to tire out the old guys on the Lake Show; if so, it seems like it worked because the comeback wouldn't have been possible if the Lakers hadn't choked hard in the 4th with misses and turnovers. It sure didn't seem to be working out for us at first because we were getting roasted, particularly by Schroder. Of course, much credit to the bench, too: they bullied the Lakers 2nd unit (with James playing but Davis & Schroder sitting) multiple times to keep us in it.
Somehow we were getting absolutely wrecked by the refs, yet they managed to piss off the Lakers too. I didn't like the aggressive technicals both ways, and there were a couple calls that felt wildly inconsistent (Montrezl vs. Paschall for example). Curry in particular could not get a shooting foul for anything, but at least they didn't give Schroder 3 FTs towards the end there.
Player grades (in order of most to least minutes, all are vs. expectations):
Oubre actually looked good on both ends for once. He still got beaten by Schroder a couple times, but his ball pressure in the 4th was CLUTCH—first the turnover on the inbounds, then poking the ball away on the last possession. Only starter with a positive +/- for a reason. A.
Curry started out "traditionally Staples Center" cold, missing easy looks and then rushing some of his other shots. He slowly heated up though, and as soon as the game was tied up with 3 minutes to go: Curry-Green PnR every possession down the stretch, with strong results. B-.
Wiggins wasn't the only one getting demolished by Schroder, but he was getting beat routinely and trivially; he looked a little better matched up against LeBron, but overall this was one of his weakest defensive games in a while. On the other side of the court, his three consecutive open threes were key in getting GSW back in the game. Those missed FTs in the 4th, though... C.
Draymond did about as well defending Davis as anyone can be expected to, which forced Davis to rack up assists instead of points. Green had some killer passes and got key rebounds, too. Oh, and his pick & roll with Curry, as usual, was championship level. A.
Looney 3/3 from the field including a 3!!! Even he got beat by Schroder on D, but I like him on Davis after Green sat with foul trouble. He actually had 5th-most minutes this game (just a few seconds more than Paschall) and guess what? Team high +/-. This kid can play. A.
Paschall with POWERFUL energy throughout. Killer no-look assist to Looney in the 3rd, fake handoff in the 4th, multiple and-ones... just phenomenal. A+.
Lee put in a fierce effort for rebounds and pushing the pace, plus his flop drew an offensive foul that LeBron was clearly mad to get. It wasn't his biggest game (he only shot 1 of 3 and wasn't in to make the game winner) but he was still a big part of the bench energy. B.
Wanamaker got off to great start, also pushing the pace. He played pretty good defense (such as is possible) on LeBron in the second unit. His passing chemistry with Paschall was a thing of beauty. We know he's capable of another gear, but this was an above average performance for him. B.
Wiseman continues to get welcomed to the NBA; Gasol was in his head. He had a couple good moves but mostly got demolished. His midrange still looks damn smooth, at least. D+.
Bazemore looked a little sloppy on defense; he knocked down his one shot at a key time, but didn't do a ton else. He definitely was playing with energy at least. C-.
Poole didn't get much done with his early minutes but didn't get picked on either. Hilariously he was +10 in 5 minutes with 0/1 on threes and 1 assist as his only box scores. C-.
I'm pretty sure Kerr is under orders to play the long game instead of trying to win at the expense of not developing Wiseman. Meaning, by the time he turns 22 Wiseman will have been exposed to everything he needs to know, and have had the court time to develop his craft, to be a helluva good BB player for the next 12 years. For this franchise, not for another one because they wasted the opportunities. Kinda what happened to Chriss in PHX and probably a million other guys. I think Kerr is handling Wiseman just right. It's a tightrope cuz we as fans want to win every game, but I like what Kerr is doing.
I've been pushing for Oubre to play with the bench unit for a while. What he did yesterday was a big reason for the win. In some strange way, Oubre is the PF we might need playing SG! He has the PF mentality with the hops to go with it.
Wiseman had an awful game. Foul trouble and looking a bit out of it, he sat a lot. Posters have mentioned his inability to field passes. I've noticed this too but it might be his mind moving faster than his body. Ezeli suffered this fate in the extreme. I hope this can be remedied. I'm still of the opinion that Curry and Dray need to keep feeding him more to score. But it doesn't seem to be in Kerr's game plan. He wants to stick with the small game.
A lucky win that doesn't give me any confidence yet in the way the Warriors are playing. Lakers fell asleep. It's on them, not the Warriors adjustments.
Regarding Wiseman's hands, I mentioned a scouting report right after the draft that said this:
"The problem could lay with his hands. He seems to have little touch which makes passing difficult and also leads to him fumbling a lot of lobs or worse had entry passes ricochet off his hands. His struggles to catch the ball in traffic and be a passer off the short roll make him far less effective in the pick and roll than you'd like to see from a 7'1" run-and-jump big man and that also hurts his NBA projection."
Swapping Wiggins for Oubre in the second unit loses a bit of passing, so it seems Kerr tried compensating for that by swapping Mulder for Poole. I'm not confident that will work because of the defensive drop off, but at the very least they'll need Poole to finally live up to being the shooter he was drafted to be.
Didn’t see Curry run to the corner as much this game and he wasn’t tremendously efficient. Did they give up on maximizing Steph to try to find a better rile for Oubre? Will it balance out in the future?
BBallBreakdown on this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU2tOGoPGh0.
I've had some gripes with Coach Nick in the last few years but this one seemed pretty fair and balanced, with some nice analysis.
Only saw this today but imagine wanting to trade a guy who consistently does this at the ends of games (and in the beginnings and middles):
https://twitter.com/MikePradaNBA/status/1351593648845156352
Also, incredible positioning by Lee. He's a legit two-way player (in the Klay sense, not the JTA sense).
Kevin O'Connor's latest power rankings (TheRinger) have the Warriors at 9th, which... well, that's probably higher than I'd rank them! So I think we can call that "bullish". It is notable that these rankings were posted >before< the Lakers game:
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2021/1/18/22236679/nba-power-rankings-james-harden-trade
"Curry has put up a rate of 40.7 points per 36 minutes in the fourth quarter, the best in the NBA. He's 11-of-21 (52.4 percent) in fourth-quarter two-point field goals and 9-of-20 from 3-point range (45.0 percent). If the game is coming down to the wire, he's the last person opposing teams want to see at the line, as he's a perfect 19-of-19 on fourth-quarter free throws. "
https://sports.yahoo.com/steph-curry-dominating-fourth-quarters-025628111.html
(Of course, using dumb stats like "in the fourth quarter" might show something like this. But I bet if you look at shots in the last 19.9 seconds of games on the road when down by four points on a Thursday, Steph is DEAD LAST in the NBA and totally unclutch!)
Since I watched the game a bit late (League Pass wasn't loading for me yesterday!) I'll drop my thoughts on the game here.
The Warriors came out intentionally pushing the pace hard; the Lakers played fast too but it felt like they were getting caught up in it rather than pushing intentionally. I wonder if that was an intentional strategy to tire out the old guys on the Lake Show; if so, it seems like it worked because the comeback wouldn't have been possible if the Lakers hadn't choked hard in the 4th with misses and turnovers. It sure didn't seem to be working out for us at first because we were getting roasted, particularly by Schroder. Of course, much credit to the bench, too: they bullied the Lakers 2nd unit (with James playing but Davis & Schroder sitting) multiple times to keep us in it.
Somehow we were getting absolutely wrecked by the refs, yet they managed to piss off the Lakers too. I didn't like the aggressive technicals both ways, and there were a couple calls that felt wildly inconsistent (Montrezl vs. Paschall for example). Curry in particular could not get a shooting foul for anything, but at least they didn't give Schroder 3 FTs towards the end there.
Player grades (in order of most to least minutes, all are vs. expectations):
Oubre actually looked good on both ends for once. He still got beaten by Schroder a couple times, but his ball pressure in the 4th was CLUTCH—first the turnover on the inbounds, then poking the ball away on the last possession. Only starter with a positive +/- for a reason. A.
Curry started out "traditionally Staples Center" cold, missing easy looks and then rushing some of his other shots. He slowly heated up though, and as soon as the game was tied up with 3 minutes to go: Curry-Green PnR every possession down the stretch, with strong results. B-.
Wiggins wasn't the only one getting demolished by Schroder, but he was getting beat routinely and trivially; he looked a little better matched up against LeBron, but overall this was one of his weakest defensive games in a while. On the other side of the court, his three consecutive open threes were key in getting GSW back in the game. Those missed FTs in the 4th, though... C.
Draymond did about as well defending Davis as anyone can be expected to, which forced Davis to rack up assists instead of points. Green had some killer passes and got key rebounds, too. Oh, and his pick & roll with Curry, as usual, was championship level. A.
Looney 3/3 from the field including a 3!!! Even he got beat by Schroder on D, but I like him on Davis after Green sat with foul trouble. He actually had 5th-most minutes this game (just a few seconds more than Paschall) and guess what? Team high +/-. This kid can play. A.
Paschall with POWERFUL energy throughout. Killer no-look assist to Looney in the 3rd, fake handoff in the 4th, multiple and-ones... just phenomenal. A+.
Lee put in a fierce effort for rebounds and pushing the pace, plus his flop drew an offensive foul that LeBron was clearly mad to get. It wasn't his biggest game (he only shot 1 of 3 and wasn't in to make the game winner) but he was still a big part of the bench energy. B.
Wanamaker got off to great start, also pushing the pace. He played pretty good defense (such as is possible) on LeBron in the second unit. His passing chemistry with Paschall was a thing of beauty. We know he's capable of another gear, but this was an above average performance for him. B.
Wiseman continues to get welcomed to the NBA; Gasol was in his head. He had a couple good moves but mostly got demolished. His midrange still looks damn smooth, at least. D+.
Bazemore looked a little sloppy on defense; he knocked down his one shot at a key time, but didn't do a ton else. He definitely was playing with energy at least. C-.
Poole didn't get much done with his early minutes but didn't get picked on either. Hilariously he was +10 in 5 minutes with 0/1 on threes and 1 assist as his only box scores. C-.
I'm pretty sure Kerr is under orders to play the long game instead of trying to win at the expense of not developing Wiseman. Meaning, by the time he turns 22 Wiseman will have been exposed to everything he needs to know, and have had the court time to develop his craft, to be a helluva good BB player for the next 12 years. For this franchise, not for another one because they wasted the opportunities. Kinda what happened to Chriss in PHX and probably a million other guys. I think Kerr is handling Wiseman just right. It's a tightrope cuz we as fans want to win every game, but I like what Kerr is doing.
KAT for minn pick +3 first rounders and Wiggins. Who says no?
I've been pushing for Oubre to play with the bench unit for a while. What he did yesterday was a big reason for the win. In some strange way, Oubre is the PF we might need playing SG! He has the PF mentality with the hops to go with it.
Wiseman had an awful game. Foul trouble and looking a bit out of it, he sat a lot. Posters have mentioned his inability to field passes. I've noticed this too but it might be his mind moving faster than his body. Ezeli suffered this fate in the extreme. I hope this can be remedied. I'm still of the opinion that Curry and Dray need to keep feeding him more to score. But it doesn't seem to be in Kerr's game plan. He wants to stick with the small game.
A lucky win that doesn't give me any confidence yet in the way the Warriors are playing. Lakers fell asleep. It's on them, not the Warriors adjustments.
Speed over size is my dating profile nickname (and let's be clear, I'm 6'1").
Regarding Wiseman's hands, I mentioned a scouting report right after the draft that said this:
"The problem could lay with his hands. He seems to have little touch which makes passing difficult and also leads to him fumbling a lot of lobs or worse had entry passes ricochet off his hands. His struggles to catch the ball in traffic and be a passer off the short roll make him far less effective in the pick and roll than you'd like to see from a 7'1" run-and-jump big man and that also hurts his NBA projection."
https://ca.nba.com/news/nba-draft-2020-james-wiseman-scouting-report-strengths-weaknesses-and-player-comparison/1vxd0qv7ms0bz1fiyeviuyusnc
Seems like it was unfortunately spot-on.
Swapping Wiggins for Oubre in the second unit loses a bit of passing, so it seems Kerr tried compensating for that by swapping Mulder for Poole. I'm not confident that will work because of the defensive drop off, but at the very least they'll need Poole to finally live up to being the shooter he was drafted to be.
Didn’t see Curry run to the corner as much this game and he wasn’t tremendously efficient. Did they give up on maximizing Steph to try to find a better rile for Oubre? Will it balance out in the future?