Getting away from home seen as a chance to grow
OAKLAND — The road can be a cold, brutal place in the NBA, but for the radically revamped Warriors, finding themselves as a team might be a far easier process away from the comforts and distractions of Oracle Arena.
With that in mind, a threegame trip starting Friday night in New Orleans couldn’t have been better timed. Following the shocking season opener in which the Warriors were roundly spanked by the San Antonio Spurs on their home floor, there are a lot of things to sort out.
The rebounding. The defense. The ball movement. The rotations. The communication. But more than anything, the Warriors simply need to get to know each other better on and off the court. With six new players, including two in the starting lineup, lack of familiarity with one another might be the Warriors’ No. 1 problem. The Spurs, to be sure, exposed that in a big way.
“That’s probably the worst team to play on opening night when you’re trying to figure out who you are,” coach Steve Kerr said. “The continuity they have is really impressive. Even though we have a lot of guys returning, KD (Kevin Durant) is a huge cog in what we’re doing now, and so are Zaza (Pachulia) and David (West). It just felt foreign. It was different, and we know it’s going to be different, and we have to react accordingly.”
Speaking on his weekly radio segment on 95.7 The Game, G.M. Bob Myers agreed that the team and its fans have been spoiled the past two seasons because there haven’t been the drastic roster changes that would render the team looking so ragged at the season’s outset.
“People don’t value continuity enough,” Myers said. “It’s just so important — experience together, continuity together. We will get there, but we’re not there now. People may rear back at that kind of comment, but it’s OK not to be a finished product in October.”
Kerr said he’s looking forward to this weeklong stretch when the Warriors play four of five away from Oracle to start nurturing some of the bonding that should naturally help lessen some of the on-court issues. The team might have thought it had togetherness all worked out by going 6-1 in the preseason, including a string of victories on a threegame jaunt to Denver, Los Angeles and San Diego.
But the games count now, and clearly these Warriors don’t know each other as well as they thought they did. Kerr said the road is the best place to start curing that.
“It just happens,” he said. “You have no choice. When you’re at home, you finish practice and everybody goes home and you don’t see each other until the next day. On the road, you’re on the plane, you’re on the bus, you’re at team dinners. You’re constantly together.
“They’re still getting to know each other, for sure,” he added. “Team dynamics have to take shape, leadership roles, that kind of stuff, who’s talking, who’s listening, who’s saying what. It all has to unfold.”
The players are definitely on board with the notion that familiarity and bonding best occurs best on the road, particularly the new ones.
“I wish we had started with a road trip and played the home opener in Game 4 or 5, because on the road it’s different,” Pachulia said. “It’s just the guys, the team. There are no distractions and you stay in the hotel together. Road trips you can always learn more than being at home. We’re going to benefit from it. How well do we know each other now? Not as well as we want to. But we have time — 81 more games.”
Added West: “Going to play tough games in tough environments, I think that always does something for your group. As we get more familiar with one another, we’re going to grow.”
Pachulia brings a far different skill set as the starting center than Andrew Bogut, and Klay Thompson learned that the hard way early in the game against the Spurs, when Pachulia whipped a behind-the-back pass from under the basket to Thompson in the corner. Thompson clearly wasn’t ready for it and misfired badly.
Both players said they got together after the game to hash it out. Stunned by the deftness of the pass, Thompson said he will be more ready the next time.
“He threw it a little too low to my knees,” he said jokingly. “I told him he should have put it in the shooting pocket.”
Said Pachulia: “We’re going to be in the same situation again and he’ll make that because Klay’s one of the best shooters in the world. I know next time he’ll make me look good.”
Other problems arose in the defensive switching, which made for some awkward rebounding scenarios. West contended a number of the Spurs’ offensive rebounds occurred when he switched with Thompson, and Thompson was left to try and block out 6-foot-10 LaMarcus Aldridge.
“We’ll get better at that as the year goes on and we get to know each other better, who we’re comfortable with switching, who we’re not,” West said. “Obviously you don’t want to get too bent out of shape because it’s Game 1 out of 82. We’re a communication group. We do a lot of talking in the locker room, do a lot of talking amongst ourselves, but it still has to translate out on the floor. When you’ve got new bodies, new people, it’s not going to happen overnight.”
Many of the Warriors are trying to accelerate the process, though. After the shellacking, a number of them went home and watched film of the game to sort out the mistakes, and they arrived at practice early Wednesday morning looking to dissect it some more.
“I’ve been on teams where guys didn’t go home and watch the game after, but I think just about everybody watched the game again,” West said. “I watched it a couple of times. That’s just how I am. What I saw is that we have work to do.”