New season, new reality: Dubs join crowd with one megastar
Stephen Curry played 26 minutes in Thursday’s preseason game against the sad, dumpy, Minnesota Timberwolves, scoring 40 points on 14-of-19 shooting, 6 of 9 from beyond the line.
It was a really good performance from the two-time NBA MVP.
But in it, he gave away the Warriors’ gameplan for the first few months of the season.
Perhaps it was presumed over the summer, but now that the Warriors are on the court, playing real basketball against “real” teams (in games that don’t count), the truth is glaring: Golden State is going to have to play the way the 29 other teams in the NBA have been playing during the Dubs’ run of dominance.
In that system, one star (if you’re a lucky team, it’s one of your two stars) carries the offensive load, and teams cross their fingers and pray that the role players around that star can do enough to get the team over the top.
It’s exhausting.
That isn’t to say that it’s bad. It isn’t. But compared to the past three years with superteams and the massive advantage the game-changing Warriors had on the league the two years prior to that, it’s as if we’ve all gone from first class to economy plus (business class if we’re lucky), or from driving a Range Rover to a topof-the-line Nissan Altima.
There’s nothing wrong with the latter options, but it’s going to be jarring coming from the top of the line.
Prepare accordingly. The Warriors were, of course, hoping that the addition of D’Angelo Russell would ensure that the team’s drop wasn’t so precipitous, and that might prove to be the case, but what stood out to me in Golden State’s game against the Timberwolves on Thursday — which was far more indicative a performance than their preseason debut against the Lakers — is that while this team have two offensive stars active on their roster — Curry and Russell — that duo doesn’t exactly optimize each other.
Can the two play together? Of course. They’re both great scorers. It really is a joy to watch both of them with the ball in their hands.
And that, of course, is the problem.
Much like with Curry and Durant, both Curry and Russell their best work on the ball. But unlike Curry and Durant, Russell is also a guard, which makes it more difficult to alternate possessions between the two when both are on the court.
With Russell, the Warriors want to run many of the same plays they run for Curry.
With Durant, a postup was always an option and the Warriors could run weak-side actions off of that (they often didn’t, because, well, KD had the ball, so it was probably going in).
The similarities in skill aren’t a huge issue with Russell and Curry — both are awesome and the Warriors will make it work. But for the Warriors to be fully optimized, it’s become clear that the two All-Star guards are going to have their minutes staggered as much as possible.
It seems as if Warriors coach Steve Kerr has already figured that.
Curry and Draymond Green (they’re a package deal at this juncture) are going to play the entire first, third quarter. and the final half of the second, fourth quarters.
Russell — much like Durant last year, but perhaps to a bit more of an extreme (we’ll see) — will play alongside Curry for the first part of the first and third quarters and the final portions of the second and fourth. In between, he’ll rest at the end of the first and third quarters and ride effectively solo at the beginning of the second and fourth.
That system is going to work pretty damn well, because the Warriors will always have an elite-level scoring point guard on the court. What more could you want i this era? (Don’t answer that.)
But ... dare I say it? ... the system is also reminiscent of how the Rockets handled having James Harden and Chris Paul the last few years. (And perhaps how they’ll handle Harden and Russell Westbrook this year.)
The Warriors are going to run far more intricate sets than the Rockets’ “stand and let James iso” offense — a bit of a surprise, considering all the offseason talk about simplifying the offense — but the core, a ball-handler needing to carry the vast majority of the offensive load for 48 minutes, is the same.
The Warriors are a feelgood, do-more version of Harden’s Houston now. They’re the fancy Rockets.
Welcome to the new reality. It’s... jarring.
Also, get your Stephen Curry MVP votes in ASAP. JORDAN POOLE GIVES THE WARRIORS AN INTERESTING DIMENSION >> Another thing we’ve learned in the early portion of Warriors’ preseason is that rookie Jordan Poole is going to shoot the ball. The dude does not have a conscience.
This, unquestionably, is a good thing.
The most important thing in the NBA today is shooting. The Warriors, ironically, don’t have all that much of it, particularly with Thompson out of the lineup. Remember the NBA Finals?
And while Poole might not provide much of the second-most important thing in the NBA — perimeter defense — unlike Thompson, earlyon, it seems as if the 6-foot-5 guard will take on a Thompson-like role in the Warriors’ offense, which again, has been surprisingly similar to the one we’ve come to know and understand the last few years.
Poole has put up 23 shots in two games, knocking down 47 percent overall and 43 percent of his 16 3-point attempts.
If the first few weeks is any indication, not only is he going to be in the rotation, he’s going to be a big part of it. ALFONZO MCKINNIE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING >> McKinnie is a starter on this Warriors’ roster, but through two preseason games, it’s hard to justify Golden State keeping him around — he’s yet to do much of overt worth.
That said, I did see him do a “McKinnie” Thursday: He grabbed an offensive rebound, missed shot at the rim, and then picked up an immediate foul afterward.
With Marquese Chriss playing so well in two preseason games, it’s easy to mentally swap one for the other.
The issue with that is that Chriss will be the Warriors’ third center when Willie Cauley-Stein and Kevon Looney return from injury.
In a league where wing depth is critical to success, it might be too bold to move on from McKinnie this preseason.
That said, he needs to show something in the final few preseason games to assuage growing con