GLARING ISSUE
It’s still early, but Warriors’ woes on defensive end of court are quite staggering
The Warriors aren’t losing games — 10 of 12 this season, now — because they can’t score. No, that’s a secondary issue for this team. The Warriors are, in fact, losing games because they cannot stop anyone from scoring.
The Lakers were no exception on Wednesday night.
Without Anthony Davis in tow, the Lakers cut through the porous and disorganized Warriors defense with ease. They had an alley- oop on the first play of the game. LeBron James was toying with the
Warriors. JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard dominated inside. Kyle Kuzma had a tougher time getting buckets in the Pac-12.
In all, the Lakers scored 120 points on the night to the Warriors’ 94, but had they actually efforted to expose the Warriors’ defense, they might have made a run at 150. Ultimately, the game was so well in hand after the first quarter — the outcome so obvious that it would have been uncouth to keep pushing — that the Lakers put on cruise control and coasted to a victory.
But again, they still averaged nearly 1.2 points per possession.
And that’s the norm in every game the Warriors have played this year.
Of course, the Warriors can’t keep up with their opponents — every night they’re effectively playing the best offense in the NBA.
There’s a lot of basketball to be played, but this Warriors’ defense is on pace to be the worst in NBA history. Last season, the Cavs set that mark with an 82-game defensive rating (points per 100 possessions) of 116.8. The Warriors entered Wednesday’s game with an identical defensive rating — the worst in the NBA (and three points higher than the best offensive rating in the league ) — and proceeded to allow an offensive rating of 119.8 to the Lakers. Their defensive rating is now 117.2. Woof. The more concerning part about it is that there’s no evidence that things are going to get better. Green can only do so much — and he’s being pulled in 10 different directions on every possession. The big men can’t protect the rim, but are hapless on the perimeter, they have wing defenders (the name of the game in the modern NBA) that qualify as halfway decent, and they’re playing D’Angelo Russell — one of the worst defenders in the NBA — major minutes, because he’s their best offensive player.
Perhaps rotations will look better. Perhaps some of the young players and newcomers find the best defensive versions of themselves in the coming days, weeks, and months, but even then, I don’t know if the Warriors can avoid being the worst defensive team in the NBA and the worst mark in the history of the league.
And to think that during their dynasty — you know, the one that just ended this summer — the Warriors’ prided themselves on their ability on the defensive end of the floor.
• Not only was the Warriors’ interior defense terrible Wednesday, but they were also roundly outrebounded for the umpteenth time this season.
The Lakers pulled down 51 rebounds to the Warriors’ 33 at Staples Center.
It was an unacceptable margin for a team that was being beaten — it hints at bad effort.
Because not only was the total lopsided, but the percentages were damning, too. The Lakers corralled down more than a third of all offensive rebound opportunities Wednesday — 36.1 percent — and almost 80 percent of all defensive rebounds.
Willie Cauley-Stein Stein’s rebound percentage of 12.5 — with a defensive rebound percentage of 11.6 — is shambolic. Lakers guard Alex Caruso — all 6 feet and 5 inches of him — had a higher rebounding rate when he was on the court.
I’d say it’s the kind of performance that should land WCS some more time on the bench, but truth be told, I don’t know who else would play his minutes.
How many games are there left in the season?