Hot take: Saturday against the Clippers was the Warriors’ best defensive game of 2024. Actually, there were maybe one or two games from last season where I jumped out of my chair during a watch party and said, “Omg! That’s the championship-level defense we need to make a playoff run!” Alas, didn’t happen much aside from those times I can count on one hand.
In that vein, the Warrior that jumped off the page to me from Saturday was De’Anthony Melton.
Here are all the scouting notes I took that were related to Melton from the Warriors’ one-point win over the LA Clippers, of course capped by the Lindy Waters buzzer-beater:
10m41 q1 Melton 3 after missing one, catch and shoot quick release — wasn’t afraid to launch after just missing one
10m02 q1 Melton went for the oreb and James Harden scored in transition, Trayce Jackson-Davis jabbed at Harden, gambling, and The Beard burned the youngster — tough to blame anyone on that for an unsuccessful offensive board crash (by Melton) then a mismatch in transition
8m53 q1 Melton defense: he anticipates the Ivica Zubac screen and moves his feet closer to Harden
8m38 q1 Melton great switch with Trayce on Harden, Jonathan Kuminga ended up getting downhill transition the other way
7m47 q1 Melton stays with Harden, body contact, no foul, Stephen Curry anticipates, steals, JK downhill trans = WARRIORS BASKETBALL (of 2024-25), love to have Melton there just for defensive osmosis to Moses Moody because Moody could not do that last year (more on this, below)
6m32 q1 Melton again great D vs Zubac pick, might’ve even been a charge (no call)
9m29 q2 Steph to Melton zig-zag turnover probably due to lack of chemistry
It got so routine during the watch party calling Melton’s number, I decided to just start referring to him as “DA”:
9m06 q2 DA pull up trans over Zu
8m23 q2 DA oreb vs Zu, feeds Steph, back to DA for 3 splash timeout
6m05 q2 Steph, DA, JK, Gary Payton II, Draymond Green is a nice combination
5m18 q2 JK with a nice switch on the POA from Norman Powell then the handover to DA — just not something we saw a lot of last year
Moody also had his nice moments on defense, particularly the reach-in steal and breakaway bucket that would have been part of any game highlight reel, and Moses has come a long way. But Melton is showing us some defensive acumen that is only now part of Moody’s process. There were many times last season where Mo couldn’t stay in front of his man, but he’s improving little by little. And he does stay ready! Did so again versus the Clips on more than one occasion.
Specific to point-of-attack (aka “POA”) defense, there was a Hawaiian reporter all week at training camp asking every Warrior what their favorite basketball training drill is, and Melton said it was defensive slides. Naturally! [I’ll have the interview up on the YouTube channel by the end of this week.]
So I had to ask our Draft expert, Eric Guilleminault of NBADraft.net, if Lottery picks lacking POA acumen has been a trend, because you look at Melton’s career and he’s “only” got three years of seniority on Moody, was the 46th pick of the 2018 Draft, and has stayed a bit below-the-radar. Then again, three years is a long time in NBA years. Anyways, it seems draftees with great POA defense are few and far between these days, or at least since 2021, when Moses was drafted.
“Rules have changed,” Guilleminault said. “So it’s harder to defend and in the current NBA, it’s hard to play a non-shooting wing, no matter how good of a defender he is. The examples are GP2 and Matisse Thybulle. If they were a reliable shooting threat, they wouldn’t play spot minutes and wouldn’t have taken so long to catch on with a team.”
For the people demanding that Moody play more, I think 1) the complexity of the Klay Thompson situation had the most domino effect on Moody’s minutes and, 2) Moses just doesn’t have the POA skill that Melton does. Not starting doesn’t mean you don’t give Mo minutes, though, but overall I’m just not worried about it because the Warriors control his contract as is the case with rookie extensions (restricted free agent) and Melton can be the direct daily observable blueprint for Moody going forward.
Melton only has a one-year deal, so if he plays all season like he did on Saturday, he’ll earn another double-digit-per-year contract after this — something Mike Dunleavy, Jr. and Joe Lacob may decide is too expensive for the GSW salary cap sheet, especially when you’d rather invest in the younger player Moody who shows an upward trend on developing that Melton-like defense. So that leaves the door open for Moody to take Melton’s spot next summer.
The worst-case scenario is if somehow Moody continues to languish with his playing time, then his agent Rich Paul demands a trade. Then you’ve got a probably irreparable situation, but I just think the odds of this happening are super-low, like near-nil (knock on wood).
Melton is actually a very nice blueprint for Moody. Melton started 31 games in his rookie season at 19.7 minutes per game and his been part of the rotation on his teams ever since. By comparison, Moody averaged 17.5 minutes per game last season. So he’s already pretty close to what a regularly impactful rotation player gets (~20 mpg).
But I did say that the Warriors need to consciously improve the market value of Andrew Wiggins as compared to what he’s getting paid ($26 million, so more than twice Melton’s), so that means plugging Wiggs in at the starting 2 with JK at the 3.
So how do you fit in both Melton and Moody? Well, that’s where the second unit comes in and maybe with Steph off the floor as well. It could make for some nice small-ball speed, three-point shooting and scrappy defense. We’ll see how it all shakes out, but I maintain that revitalizing Wiggs is still Priority Number One.
The consequences of Wiggins languishing are worse than any possible outcome of Moody. Maybe by the end of the season, Moses will leap-frog Melton, but if the playoffs started tomorrow, obviously you’d have Melton ahead of Moody on the depth chart. I mean, the fact that Dunleavy went out and got Melton shows you where they want Moody to be, asap. This is not all on Steve Kerr.
The good news is, the Warriors appear to be kind of like a Poor Man’s version of Team USA: a lot of depth, a lot of pieces (obviously not as talented, so maybe a Welfare Man’s version). Someone might not get minutes a la Jayson Tatum, but the bottom line is the Warriors are a way stronger team, especially on defense now. And frankly, it will probably come down to an injury or two. It’s just the evolution of a team within a season, there’s no need to try and predict how many minutes Moody will get in Game 82 and heading into the playoffs. Knock on wood on the injuries, but that always seems to happen at some point in the season to any NBA team.
Speaking of Wiggs, he’s fine, health-wise. He sure looked 100% not suffering from any kind of malady or cold at the end of this video from Friday:
NOTES/INTEL FROM SATURDAY
• First of all, here are our behind-the-scenes video recaps. The second one has more courtside views (where media had their seats, which reminds me of the time the Warriors played in San Diego and we were right next to the GSW bench):
• Here’s Brandin Podziemski with Steph doing their “bump-three” pregame ritual. This one is going around on social media without the proper credit to this person who had a media credential to all of training camp:
• There wasn’t much reporting going on postgame from Stan Sheriff Center at the University of Hawaii Saturday night. John Dickinson of KNBR had tweeted before the game that there was bad WiFi and the cell signal inside of the arena was bad.
[All of this stuff has literally already been posted as things happened, on our Discord server and until I can get that automated with this Substack, feel free to email me at rich@letsgowarriors.com to get an invite link to the Discord server.]
• Shaedon Sharpe has suffered a small posterior labral tear in his left shoulder, an MRI confirmed this week. Sharpe will begin rehabilitation and is expected to miss 4-6 weeks. (Marc Spears) — Warriors are in Portland on Opening Night 10/23.
• New menu at Chase Center, reel from foodie with cameo from Festus Ezeli. Also the culinary director is the only female one in the NBA:
• Cinematic reel recap of Steph in China — don’t forget we have a playlist of long-form videos for the Curry Brand China Tour:
• Kyle Anderson, a huge Mets fan, said in the 8th inning with his team down 2-0, he jumped in the ocean because he didn’t want to see them lose. And then Pete Alsonso went deep and he found out the Mets won later. (John Dickinson, see video clip behind paywall below)
• Slowmo posted six IG Stories revealing his fandom including these two:
• Slowmo also did a 14-minute interview with Tim Roye for Warriors TV. Check below the paywall for more.
• John Podziemski, BP’s dad, was spotted in the crowd. He was the only one in the vicinity wearing his son’s No. 2 jersey. See photo behind paywall below.
• Steph signed his game-worn shoes and hurtled them one a time into the crowd, trying to reach for the upper deck. The first toss was muffed badly by the first fan who touched it. We have a close-up photo of the second shoe below, behind the paywall. Please check our two video recaps of the game above for the clips.
• After the Warriors-Clippers game, Steph shouted out Harden on IG:
• Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area was actually on the premises. There’s a clip in our second recap (the courtside one) where he walks by Draymond on the exercise bike. See below the paywall for why Poole was there, as he did not appear on the NBCSBA broadcast nor did he tweet anything from there that night.
• The more notable tidbit from the above is that Dray was in beast mode on that exercise bike. It was probably due to him not playing in the second half. But it was near-comical the effort Green was putting into that poor bike lol. The video clip is below past the paywall.
• After the game, Waters posted on IG with a song by rapper Larry June, who attended Media Day (Kevin Knox, Jr. had also posted similarly):
Beyond the paywall below are some other notes/intel/pictures/video: