Warriors a wild card learning on the fly
SAN FRANCISCO — Going into the series that the Warriors wrapped up Wednesday night with a gritty 102-98 win over the Nuggets, Denver coach Michael Malone was asked how he felt about the Warriors, with key players returning from injuries, learning to play together on the fly.
“Learning on the fly, my (expletive),” Malone snorted. “Those guys have a lot of experience together, so sell that iceberg to someone else.”
With all due respect to Malone’s gluteus maximus, the Warriors are learning on the fly how to play together.
Submitted for debate: In recent NBA history, no team that is given a legitimate shot at winning the title going into the playoffs has been as unformed as the Warriors are, even after five games and one series win.
Many teams have made adjustments going into the playoffs, usually dictated by injuries and matchups. The Warriors, in terms of knowing who will fit best with whom, are at the training-camp stage of development.
The Warriors are an ongoing lab experiment.
For example, coach Steve Kerr opened Wednesday’s game with his three-guard lineup. That made sense, it’s a potentially dynamite scoring unit, but it’s still very unproven, still a nutty experiment.
When the 3-G unit sputtered at the start Wednesday, you could almost hear the ghost of Monta Ellis saying you can’t win with a backcourt full of shooters.
And coming down the stretch, as the Warriors tried to overcome the Nuggets’ eight-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter, who do you go with in this crunch time? Kerr went with the Core Three, of course — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. But he filled out that unit with Otto Porter Jr. and Gary Payton II. Two weeks ago, there was no guarantee those two would even get off the bench in the playoffs. The Warriors briefly cut Payton early in the season, and signed Porter off the scrap heap.
Payton played all but the last 21 seconds of the fourth quarter, and changed everything. Who ever saw that coming?
The Warriors will continue to reinvent themselves as they wade deeper into the playoffs. Did the three-guard lineup earn another start? Whenever that lineup does resurface, would Payton be a better fit, replacing Jordan Poole?
After all, Payton brings a super-annoying defensive presence that the 3-G lineup could use, and he moves without the ball, so opponents have to guard him, inside and outside. He’s knocking down 3’s with confidence.
This is a team of question marks. Poole and Payton are newcomers to the playoffs, and to any level of NBA stardom, and it’s impossible to predict their effectiveness in the next round.
The reading on Poole changes with the weather. He earned tons of credit the way he performed late in the season and through the first three playoff games, then struggled a bit in the last two.
Maybe Poole will get back into sync with Thompson and Curry and they will create beautiful music together as they have in brief stretches.
But maybe Poole is more comfortable when Curry’s not in the game. Their roles have become so similar, maybe redundant. Poole at times Wednesday seemed to defer to Curry. Maybe Poole’s best value to the team right now would be providing firepower and star power off the bench.
For sure the Warriors are all learning to play together on the fly. Even the core guys. When was the last NBA team that headed into the playoffs with three Hall-of-Famequality teammates who hadn’t been on the floor together the entire season?
That’s not so say anyone is feeling sorry for the Warriors. Around the league, injuries are taking a huge toll on almost every team. The Nuggets played this entire series two stars short, and lost Austin Rivers during Wednesday’s game.
Most teams are trying to survive their manpower losses. The Warriors are trying to survive their gains, to figure out how to best utilize all these suddenly-healthy guys.
The Warriors are so healthy it’s almost unfair. Curry is clearly ready to rip after missing the last eight games of the regular season. Thompson’s shooting still fades in and out — he was 1-for-6 from the 3-point line in Game 5— but in general he looks to be back in good form.
Only Andre Iguodala is ailing, and his absence probably paved the way for Kerr to lean on Payton to provide defense and disruption off the bench.
Ideally, a team has a set rotation. The better the team, the less the rotation fluctuates during the playoffs.
The Warriors have their core three, but how much they play together, and how the other guys are woven into the tapestry, is going to change from game to game, or, like Wednesday, from quarter to quarter.
Kerr and his assistants have their work cut out for them, and the players face a game-to-game challenge of learning to play together.
“I think it’s going to be hard for them to get beat in this playoffs,” Gary Payton Sr. said after the game.
That might be a leap of faith. But for sure, the Warriors learning on the fly makes them the most interesting team in the playoffs, and a challenge for opponents to figure out.