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Jamie Sweet wrote a new post
For all of 5 minutes you saw what a small glimpse of what the Warriors had hoped would be a staple of their season: a line up featuring Curry, Thompson, Wiggins, Poole and Green. It swung the game in the Warrior favor. It also started with defense. While it also has great spacing provided by their shooters, to a man that line up has solid to great defenders starting with Green. Green hasn’t shot well from three in years, in fact he has more seasons shooting under 30% from three than over it. Now he does share the floor with some elite shooters but his true contributions are his defense, smarts and passing. I would even say in that order. My point here is, while Green can certainly make a three it is certainly not the aspect of his game that makes Golden State so lethal. They maximize his better talents by putting him in perfect places to use his passing and IQ to break a defense down. The coach didn’t show up with a predetermined role for Draymond, he created an environment for the natural skill set to evolve and eventually thrive. The point I’m driving at here is, with limited resources by which we can improve our team it’s important to remember that the thing that makes Golden State work is a smart, effective defense, an offense with a foot in both modern and old school basketball, and high IQ players. If they can hit a three, wonderful, that’s another useful weapon. Does it need to be requirement #1,2, or 3? In my opinion, no it does not. We should target the best defenders we can acquire who hopefully have a diverse skillset/high IQ and trust in LeBron and hopefully some smart guy coach to work that out over time.
If you think about it, and want to go down a bummer of a rabbit hole, we had guys that checked a lot of those boxes: KCP, Kuzma, Caruso, Green, Dwight 2.0 and JaVale McGee all understood what they were supposed to do on both ends and we blew that squad up. Having Rondo was enough to take the pressure off LeBron to make a play every possession, and the defenders on the perimeter along with our centers allowed AD to play the free roamer role he’s elite at. Whatever reasons as to why we strayed from that path are the wrong ones when building an actual team that can play on the floor. Teams on paper always look good, just about anything can look amazing before it’s counted on to perform. Finding players who can both excel in a role and co-exist with the greatness of LeBron and AD in a supporting and positive manner is difficult. Hope we can find some more that can…
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I’m thinking we, at best, move on laterally from Westbrook. That’s what I’m expecting and I’ll be quite content to be wrong. Anyone who doesn’t see how out of his depth Rob is at this point must be delusional. The Klutch Krutch is and will continue to be the only pipeline by which we can hope to acquire talent from. To me, that’s a problem IMO. It shrinks tour talent pool considerably. We need more than Klutch Klients on the roster. Since the THT over Caruso choice it’s become clearer and clearer to me that we’re overly reliant on one agency. Anyhow, we’ll see what Rob can manage. I wouldn’t hold your breath on the Lakers creating less drama.
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Outstanding post, Jamie. Living in NorCal, I’ve probably seen more Warriors games than any other NBA team than the Lakers. I’ve always thought they’ve been the best run franchise in the league since Joe Lecob bought the franchise.
From a coaching standpoint, I don’t think there’s a better two-way coach in the league than Kerr. They play the ultimate share the ball team that plays great team and individual defense. His assistants keep changing but the vision and identity have been there since day 1 of Steve’s reign.
It was tough living in NorCal and being a Lakers fan when the Warriors were playing like I wanted the Lakers to play and winning while the Lakers organization was dysfunctional. Hell, even my son, who grew up bleeding purple and gold and my two granddaughters now consider themselves Warriors fans. I was only able to keep my wife and my grandson Nick as Lakers fans.
Talk about a tough act to follow but the Lakers would be wise to look north and emulate some of the savvy organizational and on-court vision the Warriors have. Lakers couldn’t go wrong copying everything Golden State’s front office and coaching staff does. Makes me wonder too whether Mike Brown should be given more consideration as the Lakers’ next head coach.
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Aloha Jamie, excellent post. Many people don’t understand that through the Warriors successful season the foundation has been a rock solid defense. And continuity is really important on the defensive side of the ball. Wiggins never was a great defender until he came to the Warriors. After a few seasons there he is solid. It is really hard to build the way the Lakers tried to do. The Warriors drafted 4 of the 5 players you mentioned. But we had a solid core that needed to be tweaked not tore down. If we had run last years squad back, we would have made the playoffs. Even without Dennis. Alex as the secondary ball handler played so well with LeBron we really didn’t need a ball dominate point guard. Even Wade and Kyre became secondary ball handler with LeBron. If we had added Monk, Melo, and Dwight, along with the emergence of Austin, that would have been a good squad. But instead we went the star route. Besides the obvious poor fit on offense, Russ was never a good defender and it was folly to believe that Frank could turn him into one, this late in his career. I really have low expectations as to what we can do. Good health could get us back into the playoffs but that’s about it. Looking at the realistic trades out there for Russ, there isn’t one that is a big game changer. Brogdon is a good defender but Buddy’s not. Hayward use to be pretty good but it’s anyones guess how effective he can still be. Ombré is decent or if Rozier comes he is undersized. And Wall and Wood from the Rockets are both poor defenders. If we are going to make some noise it really is going to be up to the guys we already have, regardless of who comes over in a trade. Hopefully we can keep Malik, he grew as a defender over the year. Gabriel and Stanley need to take steps offensively because they are actually pretty good on defense and a full summer and camp will help. Nunn didn’t play but he is a tough defender and has some offensive skill. He is a bit like a young Avery Bradley with better handles. THT and Austin both need growth spurts and consistency but are promising. And please sign Damion Jones as a back up center! That is a lot to ask but it really is are only chance if we are to become somewhat relevant.