While everyone on social media was busy throwing Steve Kerr under the bus for playing Stephen Curry “only” thirty minutes, and aside from having family in town, I dove into the play-by-play and game film analysis to try and pinpoint where the game at Minnesota really went awry.
It was a lot like Nate Jones’ reaction to the P.Diddy FBI raid news today: https://x.com/jonesonthenba/status/1772754329289843150
No doubt as some people witnessed in real-time on our usual livestream “ManningCast”, at the start of the fourth quarter I was pretty disgusted by the second unit’s three turnovers in the first three minutes and was urging Kerr on my TV screen (as well as whining to my audience on YouTube) that I’d had enough of that unit, with giveaways committed by a poor handoff from Trayce Jackson-Davis to Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins and then the breakout Timberwolves layup caused by Chris Paul’s TTBTTOT (pronounced “teebeetot”, i.e., throwing the ball to the other team”).
With Steph having logged a less-than-usual 23 minutes played by then, I was ready for him to come back for the final nine. But no, Steve stuck with those guys, to my surprise. And you know what? The Paul turnover actually only made it a four-point deficit despite the flirting with the basketball gods — I do think this came back to haunt them.
CP3 took a bad jumper that got easily blocked, Klay bricked a three, and Jackson-Davis failed to retreat on a pick-and-roll and let Rudy Gobert get a lob past him. But Thompson hit a clutch three and Minnesota called a timeout by the time Curry came in, trimming the deficit from eight to five.
The game ebbed and flowed, there were actually good buckets at the rim by the Warriors, and Curry tied the game 104-104 with 3:28 to go. I don’t know, I think any NBA coach would be happy with a tie ball game and Steph on your team for the last 3.5 minutes. That’s the main weakness of the “Steve should’ve brought Steph in earlier” narrative. And actually Tim Kawakami gave a lot of great reasons — maybe I’ll do an un-depth video and delve into this more — for that decision, although The Athletic couldn’t resist but tweet more of the juicy stuff promoting his article.
So if you analyze the close-out of the game, you’ll see that the Warriors ended up getting only five stops out of the final eleven possessions by the Timberwolves. That’s not gonna win many championships, let alone playoff games, let alone regular season games. In fact, the second unit had given up scores even before Steph set foot back on the court, on the final two trips down the court by Minnesota before. So, really, Golden State was a paltry 5-for-13 in terms of getting stops on Timberwolves possessions to close out the game.
Jonathan Kuminga came out after he gave up a three to Mike Conley, after surrendering the ball to Conley on the offensive side of the ball. Granted, the ensuing three by Conley was helped out by Gobert’s borderline illegal use of his forearms (he did this all night from all areas of the floor, something the Warriors might want to politic about with the refs before tipoff of the next matchup against the Wolves). Regardless, Kuminga’s got to find a way to crowd Anthony Edwards out there, not surrender space.
[I’LL ADD VIDEO CLIPS LATER, SORRY]
So it was Gary Payton II who closed the game. Aside from Ant hitting a triple after a brilliantly called criss-cross play from head coach Chris Finch, which caused Klay to call for a switch with Payton II, which he shouldn’t have done because it created space as Rudy rolled and Klay ended up having to cover both Gobert and Edwards.
You could see the frustration on GP2’s part after Ant made the splash. All in all, it wasn’t a bad close out, given the circumstances, by Thompson, but you’d rather they not switch in the first place because GP2 needs to be on Ant at all times because, obviously, Klay isn’t as nimble as GP2 anymore.
And finally GP2’s crucial missed layup. This actually may have cost the Warriors the game. The play design was perfection, but Gary just missed it.
All in all, GP2 closing out the game really only needed him to either make the layup or never switch off Edwards, and the night in Minnesota would’ve taken an entirely different narrative.
The Dubs aren’t that far off, although getting stops on less than half of the closing possessions simply isn’t gonna win you games. And so I wonder if Kerr will stick with Gary from this point on, to close games. Steve has said before on the podium that the closing unit would depend on in-the-moment circumstances, but after watching the tape and, well, losing trust in Kuminga, I’m inclined to go with GP2.
I didn’t have time to do any of the postgame transcripts, but maybe at some point I’ll post Draymond Green pointing to the breakdowns on defense as the cause of the loss. I did do the pregame transcript where Kerr talked about how proud he was of Green eradicating his own antics, so that’s below. There’s also video of Edwards saying he had some friendly trash-talk with Steph, plus Conley talking about his ankle-break move against Brandin Podziemski (Warriors fans will see an offensive foul on Mike, though) and Naz Reid staying humble about Steve’s “Warriors killer” praise.
0:00 Five-game trip, five games in eight days. What are the points of emphasis as you guys start the trip here?
STEVE KERR PREGAME GSW-MIN: “Keep moving forward. We watched an edit of our game against the Pacers this morning with the team and made a lot of mistakes and all very correctable and just making sure the players’ energy and spirit is still In a good place because we can still accomplish quite a bit this season, but got to improve the effort and the focus from last game.”
0:38 What jumped out beyond the effort and focus? What jumped out about the mistakes you guys made on Friday?
“Position, defense, shot selection, physicality, force, and it all ties together.”
0:50 You mentioned a desire to play two-big lineups at times, particularly with Trayce and Draymond. Is this the time?
“No, they don’t have Towns, but it’s just the type of team you would imagine needing to do that. Yeah, I mean, they’re still a massive team. They start Reid instead of Towns, so they still have another seven-footer next to Gobert and length across the board. So, very good chance we’ll play Draymond and Trayce together sometime.”
1:18 What have you thought of that small sample?
“I like it. It’s a good defensive lineup and we can make it work, spacing-wise.”
1:27 You mentioned the lack of effort in transition defense. I mean, is it surprising to you this time of the season, given what’s at stake, that you had a game like you did against the Pacers?
“It’s bad habits more than anything. And a lot of ‘stays’. We call them stays. You don’t crash. You don’t sprint back. And you just stand there. And that’s on us as coaches. We just haven’t been able to get that message across. We haven’t been able to teach it well enough. And so it’s a group effort. And we’ve got to find a way to get it across to our guys. We talk about the first three steps all the time in either direction. and that tape was just so alarming and the Pacers play at the number one pace in the league. They were pushing the ball every play and we just had stay after stay. And there’s a reason we lost. So we’ve got to find a way to teach it better. We’ve got to do it better.”
2:26 Nembhardt had a layup at like two or three minutes left. It was probably the most egregious of those. Was that on there? M
“Yes.”
2:37 Steve, you had Ant with Team USA. Just how long did it take you to kind of see everything that he brought to the table from more of a personality kind of competitive standpoint as he got to camp and you were trying to kind of figure out how he was going to fit into the group there?
“Yeah. Just a few days, honestly. I remember the first day we scrimmaged, maybe it was the second day, I think we scrimmaged the Select Team and we brought Ant off the bench. and he didn’t say anything, but he wasn’t real thrilled and we didn’t play well. The next day we switched it up, he started, we played a lot better and at that point, it’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s gonna be in our starting lineup.’ He’s really good. So, you go into these things with maybe some thoughts and ideas and you always have to kind of play around with different lineup combinations, different roles, but he made it abundantly clear right away that he was The Man on that team.”
3:50 And then with this Wolves team, where does Naz Reid figure into your scout and what kind of problems he can present on a nightly basis?
“Yeah, he kills us. I mean, he’s the Warriors killer. He has had so many good games against us. Obviously you know the spacing of the floor at that position makes things really difficult and you know with both Naz and KAT it’s necessary for them to get some spacing with Gobert, obviously, and they’ve really seemed to have figured it out this year, playing Nas, playing KAT, it allows them to stay really big across the board, but still space the floor and have Rudy as a dive threat. So, Chris (Finch) has done a great job kind of figuring out the puzzle and they’re having a wonderful season. And they’ve earned everything. They took a lot of flack for the Rudy trade. they put their chips in the middle and they’re backing it up. They’re having a great year.”
5:00 It’s been a while since this happened and what has happened since then with Draymond and Rudy and the altercation back in November. Is that something you guys even have to acknowledge or just know that there might be some animosities and chipping it?
“I didn’t even think of it until Raymond (Ridder) just mentioned it five minutes before. Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s been so long for me; obviously I focus on my guys and I’m so proud of Draymond for the way he’s come through that suspension. What he did that night to Rudy was just awful, dead wrong. Clearly didn’t affect him enough, the suspension. I think he had been suspended a couple games, five, but that didn’t affect him enough to change his behavior because when he came back, he took the swing at Nurkic and Phoenix. And I really think his career was on the line at that point. I really do like the way our discussions with the league, the nature of the suspension as indefinite, it was clear that the league wanted to see real change and we all did. I’ve said this many times, yelling at the refs, getting a flagrant foul, that’s just being a competitive NBA player. But when you strike someone, when you grab somebody by the throat, that’s different. And so what was happening was different. Punching Jordan (Poole), it was different and scary and alarming. And so I could not be more proud of Draymond for the way he has handled everything since the suspension ended. And we’re all wondering, could you really make a significant change? Within a month — I think he was out a month or so. Could you still play at a high level if you did make that change? Could you still be an effective player? Could you still be a leader on your team? How do you figure all that stuff out? Draymond is one of the smartest, most emotional people I’ve ever met. Passionate. And he’s done it. He’s figured it out. He’s been incredibly competitive and an amazing leader and mentor for his younger teammates. And he’s helped us win a bunch of games. And he’s walked the line perfectly, gotten a couple techs for yelling at the refs, but he has not crossed that line and nor do I expect him to. So, I hate that that happened to Rudy and to Nurk. I hate that that happened to Jordan. I’ve said this many times. I hate that all that happened, but couldn’t be more proud of the way Draymond has responded. And he’s gotten his career and his life back on track. It’s wonderful.”
8:05 Coach, there was a difference between your teams a season ago at home versus on the road. This season, 18 wins at home, 18 wins on the road, but eyeball test from your perspective, what’s the difference with your group and how you’re playing away from San Fran and that?
“I have no idea. I couldn’t figure it out last year why we were, we were 33-8 at home last year, couldn’t win a road game to save our life. It seems to have flipped. Couldn’t figure it out last year. I have no idea why this year.”
8:33 NAZ REID POSTGAME GSW-MIN on Kerr saying he’s a “Warriors killer”
8:50 ANT EDWARDS on talking trash in a fun way with Steph Curry
9:20 Edwards asks MIKE CONLEY about his three after dropping Brandin Podziemski
Gamenotes
(will fill this in later)
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