Draymond Green, who’s captained the NBA’s team to beat over the last half-decade, summed up the Warriors’ position this season well after Tuesday night’s win over the Phoenix Suns.
“For a second there we were the hunters, then we turned into the hunted for five, six years, whatever it was. And now we’re hunting again,” Green said Wednesday after the Warriors beat the top two teams in the West on back-to-back nights. “That’s always a fun position to be in when you’re hunting, going after everybody else.”
Facing Stephen Curry, Green and these Warriors could be a scary thought for the Western Conference’s top seeds. Given Curry’s smoldering shooting stretch and Green’s reinvigorated performance over the last few months, there’s reason to believe Golden State will be a tough matchup. If they advance past the play-in tournament, here’s how the hunters can make it out of the first round.
1. Play Stephen Curry more minutes
With the workload Curry carries on offense, coach Steve Kerr has been careful to limit him to 34 minutes in most games this season. But the first and most obvious way for Golden State to improve in the postseason is to increase the minutes that the NBA’s current scoring leader is on the court.
No team in the league more closely counts down the seconds their star player is on the bench than Golden State. Curry typically rests for the first six minutes of the second and fourth quarters and, during those stretches, his teammates are tasked with simply staying in the game. That may not seem like a lot, but 12 combined minutes can decide a game. Trimming those minutes would limit the amount of time the Curry-less Warriors could let the game get out of hand.
In his most recent playoff run in 2019, Curry played more than 38 minutes a night. Doing so again would cut those rest periods by a minute or two each. Over the last month, the Warriors have outscored opponents by 7.7 points per game with Curry on the court. Extrapolate that by adding another four minutes, and that’s nearly 8.6 points per game. After defeating the Jazz and Suns by a combined nine points, Golden State knows every point counts.
2. Rely on a tightened rotation
Though not ideal on its face, injuries to rookie James Wiseman and guard Kelly Oubre Jr. have cleared things up for Golden State.
Wiseman’s season-ending knee injury recast Golden State’s goals this season. No longer faced with the challenge of balancing Wiseman’s development and making the playoffs, the Warriors went all-in on their best lineups. Since Wiseman’s last game on April 10, the Warriors’ starting lineup with Kevon Looney at center ranks among the league’s best, outscoring opponents by 7.6 points per 100 possessions.
During that span, Golden State is first in defensive rating, ninth in offensive rating and first in overall net rating by a mile (plus-9.1 points per 100 possessions). The Warriors are 13-5 in that stretch, and Oubre played in just five of those games with a lingering wrist injury.
While both Wiseman and Oubre could put up numbers in bunches, those numbers did not translate to winning. For the season, the Warriors were outscored by 183 points in Wiseman’s minutes and by 190 points in Oubre’s minutes. Both struggled to play alongside Curry in Kerr’s motion-heavy offense while Wiseman remains on the steepest part of his learning curve defensively.
Those injuries, along with Eric Paschall’s, forced Kerr to shorten his rotation to eight players. It also smoothed out Golden State’s weaknesses. At the beginning of the season, teams could target Wiseman in pick-and-rolls, coax Oubre, a 31% 3-point shooter, into ill-advised jumpers and exploit Paschall’s size as a small-ball center.
Now the Warriors’ lineups are more balanced and don’t provide a glaring weakness that opponents can abuse. With Oubre out, the Warriors spread the floor with Kent Bazemore (making 41% of his 3-point attempts) and Mychal Mulder (39% from beyond the arc), leaving more room for Andrew Wiggins to cut and Green to create open looks. Looney is a sturdy defender capable of switching onto the perimeter and, when he rests, the Warriors go small with high-IQ defenders in Green or Juan Toscano-Anderson at center.
3. Deploy the new death lineup
Those small-ball lineups anchored by Green at center alongside Toscano-Anderson and Curry have helped resuscitate the Warriors’ season. The Warriors have outscored opponents by 12 points per 100 possessions with those three on the floor and typically surround them with shot creators such as Wiggins and Jordan Poole.
It was Toscano-Anderson, a revelation this season, who was the skeleton key. Not only does he fit seamlessly into Kerr’s motion-heavy offense, he elevates it. With the ball, he makes quick decisions and sees the game a step ahead of the defense. Without the ball, he’s constantly on the move, setting screens, cutting for dunks and spreading the floor (shooting 41% on 3s).
Squint when Curry, Green and Toscano-Anderson are on the court and the contours of the famed death lineup appear. Toscano-Anderson plays the Andre Iguodala role, a shooter can fill in for Klay Thompson and Wiggins is the next in line of Golden State’s switchable small forwards. Down the stretch of Tuesday’s close game against the Suns, it was this lineup Kerr turned to and helped deliver the win.
If Wiggins is playing aggressively and a shooter (Poole, Bazemore or Mulder) is making shots, this is a tough lineup for a first-round playoff opponent. Suns seemed downright perplexed by it, slotting lumbering center Deandre Ayton on Poole which led to Poole’s game-changing 3-pointer in the final two minutes. If Golden State dares to go small against Utah, the Jazz would face a similar decision with 7-footer Rudy Gobert.
A counter-argument
In all, these adjustments boil down to the Warriors leaning on their best stuff — the same thing every other team will do in the postseason. Come playoff time, the Suns will wipe away those random minutes for Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig and increase minutes for Chris Paul and Devin Booker.
The Jazz could have Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley back and lean into the deepest nine-man rotation in the league. Mitchell won’t play again this regular season with a bum right ankle while Conley could return this weekend from a hamstring strain, but both will have nearly a week to recover and condition between the end of the regular season and the start of the first round.
But if the Warriors advance out of the play-in tournament, either team will have to be close to their best to prevent the upset. Golden State deserves their attention.
