San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Warriors struggling to unlock flow
Ugly losses in Brooklyn, Milwaukee to open season highlight new players’ need to adapt
Stephen Curry is at his best when the Warriors expertly exhibit all the fundamentals of the game: dribbling, passing, shooting.
It’s no surprise, then, that he struggled as Golden State dropped its first two games of the season by a combined 65 points. With the paint clogged and possessions disjointed, Curry shot 13for38 from the field ( 4for20 from 3point range) in those blowouts in Brooklyn and Milwaukee.
But given that Curry knows as well as anyone what goes into beautiful basketball, he is qualified to assess what ails a team that just got embarrassed twice
on national TV in a fourday span. After the Warriors’ 13899 rout by the Bucks on Christmas Day, Curry said, “Our group’s collective IQ has to get a lot better.”
This was meant in the most basic sense. Without guard Klay Thompson ( torn Achilles tendon) and forward Draymond Green ( right foot issue), the Warriors had a tough time with almost every type of oncourt decision: when to pass, shoot, set a screen or rotate on defense. The good news for Golden State is that it has 70 games left, most of which are against teams far worse than the Nets and Bucks. Wins at Chicago ( Sunday) and Detroit ( Tuesday) would allow the Warriors to enter a sevengame homestand with a 22 record and renewed selfbelief.
It only helps that Green could return against the Bulls after missing the entire preseason and first two regularseason games. He is adept at organizing the defense, finding open shooters and, perhaps most importantly, helping the Warriors get back to their freeflowing ways.
But as last season illustrated, Green’s presence alone isn’t always enough to fix Golden State’s problems. His teammates must be able to follow his directives. In coming weeks, head coach Steve Kerr will learn whether his group has the talent and basketball IQ to execute a game plan.
The beatdowns in Brooklyn and Milwaukee showed that the Warriors aren’t ready to contend for homecourt advantage in the playoffs, but perhaps they could finish above .500 and earn a topsix seed. That’s likely a more realistic goal for a Thompsonless team.
“We just have to get better,” Green said. “We can try to make all the sense of it that we want, but the reality is that we’ve lost by an average of 32 ½ points. That’s not acceptable.”
Curry, for his part, is already ratcheting up the urgency. When he said Friday that the Warriors “have to win immediately,” he was drawing upon something he learned on bad teams early in his career: A season can derail in its first week or two.
Though media and fans judge teams off what they see in games, coaches and players glean their opinions from everything from the lockerroom ethos to practice drills to latenight conversations at the hotel. Last season, even before Curry broke his left hand in the fourth game, the Warriors knew they were likely lotterybound.
A halfdecade atop the league hierarchy had taught them what it takes to compete for titles, and they could see that they no longer possessed what playoff runs require. This year hasn’t been so clearcut. Though Thompson’s latest seasonending injury quashed their title hopes, the Warriors saw enough in preseason to believe they could at least be competitive.
Kerr was pleased with how quickly youngsters — particularly rookie center James Wiseman — grasped concepts in practice. Instead of rushing home after workouts, players lingered to attempt extra shots and get to know their teammates.
But during those drubbings against the Nets and Bucks, the Warriors failed to execute the schemes and reads they had aced in practice. The question now: Was that just because Brooklyn and Milwaukee are so elite, or does Golden State not have nearly as much potential as the team’s workouts suggested?
It’s reasonable to blame at least some of the Warriors’ issues on a lack of time together. After a ninemonth hiatus from games, Golden State only had a threeweek preseason to acclimate Curry to an overhauled supporting cast.
Late last month, after a workout at Chase Center, Curry told assistant coach Bruce Fraser, “We can be really good. We might start a little slow, but we have the talent.”
Kerr’s offense relies on reads more than plays. To maximize their motion principles, the Warriors must be precise with their positioning and timing.
Part of what made Golden State’s recent dynasty so special was that, in addition to boasting savvy, proven role players, it had a core that had grown together in Kerr’s system. Though new acquisitions such as Kelly Oubre Jr. and Andrew Wiggins are skilled, they’re just beginning to figure out the nuances necessary to play the Warriors’ preferred style.
“We’re getting more and more acclimated every day with each and every practice,” said Oubre, who went a combined 4for24 from the field ( 0for11 from 3point range) in his first two Warriors games. “It’s a rhythm and flow thing, so we got to continue to just find that within each other. Once we all are on the same string, I think everything will flow seamlessly.”