Warriors’ success depends on depth, Curry’s return
With the 2020-21 NBA regular season about to tip, Stephen Curry enters the season as the headliner for a Warriors team aiming to return to the playoffs.
But there are many more compelling story lines around this team as it enters a pandemic-impacted 72-game season.
Here are the five biggest things to watch before today’s opener in Brooklyn.
1. CURRY’S SOLO ACT >> This time a year ago, Curry was supposed to be in the midst of an MVP-caliber campaign. But after missing most of last season recovering from a broken left hand, Curry is back, healthy and being asked to do the same thing. If the preseason was any indication, Curry should be back to his two-time MVP ways after posting per36-minute averages of 31.3 points on 39.4% shooting (6 of 15.2) from 3-point range.
The question is whether or not Curry will have enough support from a new-look supporting cast and without Klay Thompson, who is sidelined for the second straight season with an Achilles tear. Golden State’s starting five — Curry, Kelly Oubre Jr., Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green and, eventually, James Wiseman — is better than that of last season’s. With their length, speed and
defense-first mentality, there’s at least a budding identity with this group.
But it still needs Curry cranking his gravity to 11 and spacing the floor from well beyond the 3-point line. Green, the only other high-level playmaker on the roster, has missed the entire preseason and will miss the season opener with a right foot injury.
Although Oubre is a good slasher, confident shooter and aspires to be a good defender, he’s never posted a positive plusminus in any of his four seasons. Maybe he’ll find more success and force fewer shots in the space Curry provides. Wiggins has shown flashes in the preseason of being able to lead the Warriors’ second unit -- and was quietly a plus-5.5 in 400 minutes with Golden State last season -but consistency has always been the concern with him.
Kent Bazemore and Brad Wanamaker are reliable bench contributors, but they aren’t Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. Unlocking those small-ball lineups with Green at center will be dicier with one of them filling a wing spot.
Steve Kerr could go with Green and Eric Paschall in the frontcourt. Such a move gives up height, but they are both strong (and, in Paschall’s case, very strong) and can theoretically switch, score and rebound. The Warriors were outscored by 98 points in the 398 minutes that duo played together last season, but that was a small sample played without Curry. Still, one of those guys needs to shoot at league average from 3-point range (35.8% last year), and neither has inspired much confidence that will happen this season.
Does any lineup have enough shooting to take some shot-making responsibility off Curry, or enough play-making to make Curry’s job easier? Curry has elevated worse offenses during the biggest moments in the past, but can he do it for an entire season? Either someone needs to emerge as a bona fide No. 2 scorer, or Kerr needs to out- scheme opposing coaches and coax enough 3-point shooting (Golden State averaged 42 attempts per game in the preseason, up by nearly 11 from last season) out of this roster to get back into the top half of the league on offense.
2. IS A TOP-10 DEFENSE REALISTIC? >> After posting the fifth-worst defense in the league last season, the Warriors prioritized size and length when adding personnel this offseason. Since February, they’ve swapped the defense-averse D’Angelo Russell for Wiggins, drafted Wiseman with the No. 2 pick and traded for Oubre. Although this team doesn’t have the experience and savvy of the dynastic defenses, it does feature many long limbs and a penchant for chaos. The path to a top-10 defense is clear: deflections and blocked shots.
Wiggins and Oubre should help create deflections by jumping passing lanes on the perimeter, while Curry has always ranked among the league’s leaders in steals. Though Kevon Looney and Marquese Chriss, each at 6-foot- 9, are undersized for starting centers, Wiseman is not. With his 7-foot- 6 wingspan and 9-foot- 6 standing reach, he is Golden State’s most imposing rim protector.
3. WISEMAN’S DEVELOPMENT >> At first, Wiseman will play a simple role as a rim-runner on offense and rim-protector on defense. But as the season goes on, the Warriors will ask more of him, including playmaking and switching. Though he’s already been named the eventual starter, how Wiseman develops will determine how many minutes he plays per game.
The best- case scenario for the Warriors would be Wiseman playing at least 25 minutes a night. If he can, it means he’s making a tangible impact and that Golden State’s front office nailed the second-overall pick.
4. CAN THE WARRIORS AVOID THE PLAY-IN TOURNAMENT? >> There’s a clear top six teams in the Western Conference: the Lakers, Clippers, Nuggets, Trail Blazers, Jazz and Mavericks. The Warriors rank somewhere in the next tier, with the Suns and Pelicans.
This season, the top six teams in each conference get automatic bids to the playoffs. Teams with the seventh- through 10th-best record enter a play-in tournament. The winner between the seventhand eighth-place teams gets the No. 7 seed. The loser of that game plays with the winner of the 9-10 game for the No. 8 seed.
Obviously, teams would prefer to skip the play-in and just go straight into the playoffs. However, it will likely take a lot going right for the Warriors — and something going wrong for one of the teams ahead of them — for them to finish with one of the six best records in the West.
5. WHERE DOES MINNESOTA’S PICK FALL? >> Because they own Minnesota’s top-three protected pick in the 2021 draft, the Warriors will be closely monitoring the Timberwolves this season. They want that pick to land close to the top three without actually falling into it. FiveThirtyEight’s projections have Minnesota finishing with the league’s 10th-worst record, which would put them in the lottery with a 9.9% chance of their pick landing in the top three. It’s worth pointing out is that the better the pick looks by the March 25 trade deadline, the more value it would have around the league.