Curry's injury presents an opportunity for the Warriors to find themselves
Is it too early to say the Warriors' title defense is dangling by a thread?
We're nearly 40% through the regular season, and the defending champs are below .500, with a 3-14 record on the road. They're sitting right on the Western Conference play-in bubble, as close to being overtaken by the 13th-place Thunder as they are to jumping into the top six. Stephen Curry, who's improbably played some of the best ball of his life in his age-35 campaign, is now on the shelf with a shoulder subluxation that seems likely to keep him sidelined for the next three to four weeks.
That's precarious territory for a scuffling team that's been outscored by eight points per 100 possessions - while posting a 105.4 offensive rating that'd rank last in the league by a mile - without Curry on the floor.
If nothing else, this feels like an inflection point for the Warriors' season - a sink-or-swim stretch that'll determine how feasible another deep playoff run proves to be. They can continue to flounder in Curry's absence and fall so far back in the standings that his return won't be enough to prevent them from having to win two road play-in games just to make it to the dance. Or they can use this as an opportunity to figure out how to play when their transformational star is on the bench, building confidence and momentum that they can really get snowballing when he returns.
To that end, the team's first two games in the wake of Curry's injury have been encouraging. Despite also missing Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins against the 76ers, the Warriors came out throwing flames and continued to hang tough after cooling off, though they ultimately succumbed to defeat. Then, with Green back in the lineup, they torched the slumping Raptors to record just their third road win and their first Curry-less victory in five tries this season.
There was never any doubt that the Warriors could defend, with or without their best player. But they did a much better job in their most recent game of turning defense into transition offense, which should be one of their most reliable sources of points in Curry's absence. The 3-point shooting (43% over the last two games) may not be sustainable, but if they continue to run and cut and screen with incredible pace and purpose while assisting on 76% of their made field goals, this stretch will be survivable.
"It provides a blueprint," Green said after that resounding win. "We know how we have to play. Shots aren't going to always go in the way they went in tonight, but we played good basketball. And usually, when you play good basketball, the shots will reward you. If anything, it's a blueprint for how we need to play moving forward."
Perhaps the most promising sign is that Jordan Poole, the one Warrior with the ability to replicate what Curry does generally, really stepped up in the last couple of games after struggling for large portions of the season. He dropped a combined 72 points on 71% true shooting in the two contests, including a career-high 43 against the Raptors.
Poole couldn't find the range on his pull-up jumper for most of the year (42% from mid-range, 28% from deep), which consistently allowed opposing defenses to get away with playing drop against him. His shot selection was often questionable, too, and at times it felt like he was compounding his struggles by overthinking or pressing. But the extent to which he's been able to feel the ball as the team's interim lead guard has seemingly helped him get into a better groove, both as a self-creator and as a playmaker for others. He feasted in the pick-and-roll without forcing anything. He passed up good shots in order to generate great ones.
It was telling that after dropping 25 in the first half against the Raptors, Poole used his first two possessions of the third quarter to set up a pair of clean threes with live-dribble skip passes that beat a defense bending towards him.
"I thought his patience was incredible," Green said. "We saw a couple shots that he would (normally) be taking, guy's sitting on 32 points and he'd kind of get an open one, and yet he'd drive and make the next play. … It slowed everyone else down and allowed everyone else to have great patience. I thought the way he controlled the game was amazing."
It'd be nice if Klay Thompson could also find his footing during this stretch. He's endured a pretty choppy campaign as he tries to shake off the rust from an inactive offseason. Playing under a minutes restriction, he's looked to jack up as many shots as possible in his limited court time, and his attempts to shoot himself into rhythm have produced mixed results.
The process behind those shots hasn't always been great, either; there have been a few too many step-in long twos, especially considering he's shooting just 40% from the mid-range. His role in the offense never really changes, but this could be an opportunity for him to streamline his decision-making. The fact that defenses still treat him like the lethal movement shooting threat he was at his peak means there are plenty of potential playmaking avenues for him to explore.
But back to Poole. His ascendence last season was the biggest reason the Warriors had their best-ever offensive showing in non-Curry minutes, so the hope is he can bring this same confidence and patience as the sixth man when the team gets healthy.
One of the key adjustments head coach Steve Kerr made this season was pairing up Green and Poole more often when Curry was on the bench, which meant reducing the minutes in which Green and Curry shared the floor. That's something he's typically been reluctant to do because of the unique way those two amplify each other, but it became necessary because of how badly Golden State was getting crushed when both of them were on the bench.
The Warriors have still played only 139 minutes this season with Green and Poole on the floor without Curry, but they own a robust plus-4.8 net rating in those minutes, per PBP Stats. (Their Green-only lineups have actually dramatically outperformed their Curry-only lineups so far, though the sample sizes of both are still quite small.) For whatever interpersonal friction may have existed (and may still exist) between Green and Poole, they're starting to develop some crackling on-court chemistry.
"I look at everything as a challenge. When Steph is on the court, when Steph isn't on the court," Poole said when asked if he embraces the role he's been thrust into. "We've gotta play a little bit different when Steph's out, but at the end of the day, it's just about trying to play team ball."
To Poole's point about having to play differently, Kerr has shown a willingness to tweak his system as circumstances dictate, like when he doesn't have the luxury of Curry's court-bending off-ball gravity. The Warriors still implement their motion principles and run plenty of their high-post splits, rapid ball reversals, and screen-and-slip actions on the weak side without him, but they might also dial up the frequency of more straightforward two-man actions at the top of the floor. To wit: They averaged about 54 ball screens per 100 possessions before Curry's injury. In their first game afterward, they bumped that number up to 73, according to Second Spectrum.
A surprise beneficiary of that increase, on top of guards like Poole and Donte DiVincenzo, was big man Kevon Looney, who showcased some improved connective playmaking chops in that Sixers game. In Green's absence, Looney was the screener in the bulk of those two-man actions, and he made countless short-roll reads that produced either driving layups for him or clean catch-and-shoot threes for his teammates. He finished the game with nine assists, besting his previous career-high of six.
"I feel like I'm a really good passer, I think my teammates trust me in the pocket to make plays," Looney said. "(Green) is one of the best passing bigs in the league, and I've been learning from him my whole career, so when he's out, I just do all the things I've been watching him do for a long time."
He isn't going to supplant Green in that role while the latter is still on the team, but those flashes of fluidity as a playmaking hub bode well for Looney's ability to be a second-unit stabilizer in his own right. Like Green, he hadn't played much without Curry until recently (just 214 minutes on the season, with 113 of them coming in games Curry missed), but the Warriors scored at a relatively solid rate in those minutes.
In a way, any extended stretch without Curry feels like a glimpse into Golden State's future, and it's clear Kerr has thought a lot about how to put the team's developing young players (not just Poole, but also Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, and James Wiseman) in the best position to succeed. He acknowledges that the Warriors may not always be able to play the way they play now.
"As a coach, I think you always want to try to play a game that suits your talent," he said. "So, the way we've played for years is based on Steph, Draymond, Klay. And we're playing a similar style with our young guys, but we're also factoring in what they do well and trying to make sure that we're adjusting and adapting to their talents as we go."
It'll be fascinating to watch the Warriors continue to adjust and adapt as Curry's absence drags on and they inevitably face more challenges.
At the end of the day, they can still hang their hat on the fact that they've been utterly dominant with their best players on the floor. The starting lineup of Curry, Thompson, Wiggins, Green, and Looney posted a ludicrous 129.9 offensive rating and outscored opponents by 23 points per 100 possessions across 278 minutes. It's hard to square that with Golden State's uneven season and sub-.500 record, but those numbers certainly suggest that this team still has the firepower to beat anyone in the playoffs.
Of course, to put themselves in a position to do that, it's imperative for the Warriors to figure out how to improve in every other lineup configuration. These next few weeks will give them every opportunity to do so, and then to apply what they've learned once Curry returns.