Burks was hot, defense was not
As any reasonable basketball fan expected, the Warriors lost their sixth game of the season Wednesday night, as James Harden and the Houston Rockets ran the Baby Dubs off the court with an endof-secondquarter blitz en route to a 129-112 win that was never in question come the second half.
Here are my three big takeaways from the game:
1. BURKS POPS, BUT THE DEFENSE DOES DUBS IN »
As much as this Warriors’ season is about developing young players, not all the players on this current nine-man roster are young.
Alec Burks, for instance, is 28 years old. The former Utah, Cleveland, and Sacramento wing did well for himself Wednesday, scoring 28 points with a 61.8 effective field goal percentage.
Yes, the rest of the Warriors couldn’t do anything to prevent the Rockets from putting the ball in the basket on Wednesday.
Some of that was Harden doing his Master of the Dark arts act — for someone who claims he wants to “inspire”, he sure does play the least entertaining form of basketball imaginable — but most of it was bad Warriors’ defense.
Golden State allowed the Rockets to score 1.26 points per possession on Wednesday. There’s simply no way these Warriors are going to win games with that kind of defense.
And that’s especially true when Ky Bowman turns the ball over one out of every four possessions, as he did Wednesday; Eric Paschall looks merely good — not like an All-Star (19 points on 46.7 EFG vs. Houston); and the other starting guard on this team — Jordan Poole — posts an offensive rating of 76.6.
Had Burks not played well, this game would have seen a difference of possibly 40 points. Perhaps that was what the Dubs deserved.
Don’t think of Burks’ performance as coming
in vain, though. If Burks keeps playing well — and there’s no reason for the Warriors to stifle any of his minutes going forward — he might just play himself onto a playoff contender and the Warriors — who can use all the draft capital they can get after a half- decade of being fast and loose with picks — might be able to land something of real value for a player on the NBA minimum.
That’d be a win-win. Even amid so many losses. 2. EMPTY POOLE » As mentioned before, Jordan Poole had another rough night shooting. (Rough nights are expected on defense from the 20-year- old.)
Poole went 2 of 11 from the field and 2 of 8 from beyond the arc against Houston. He’s shooting 26 percent from the field and 32 percent from beyond the arc this season. Woof. Now, it goes without saying that such shooting performances won’t help the Warriors win, but taking a wide-lens view of the situation, it’s almost a blessing that the Warriors are so bad right now.
Poole is going to be a player the Warriors need — either as a trade asset next summer or as a role player in 2020-21 and beyond. And because the Warriors aren’t going to come within a country mile of a playoff spot this season and there’s really no one on the roster that can take away shots from him at the moment, the rookie will be allowed to shoot his way through this presumed slump. That’s a pretty cool opportunity — one I hope he makes the most of this season.
Truth be told, I don’t know if there is light at the end of the tunnel. There’s simply no guarantee that he’ll ever be a good shooter. And some evidence is starting to develop that he is not — he is 8 for 41 on 2-pointers so far this season, after all.
Now, to be fair, he is taking some difficult shots. It’s a lot for a rookie to handle, but as one of the only players on this team that can create his own looks at the basket, he’s being asked to do so much more than catch-and-shoot and those looks are intrinsically going to fall at a lower percentage.
And again, what’s the downside of letting the shooter shoot? Poole hasn’t been discouraged by the slow start to his career — what reason should anyone else have for beating him to the punch?
If we’re in 2020 and still wondering when the shots are going to fall, then we can have a larger, more serious conversation. For now, it might be painful, but that pain could lead to serious — and necessary — growth. 3. O-SPEIGHTS SIGHTING » One-third of the Warriors’ current active roster is centers, which certainly highlights: 1. How injured this team is and 2. How poorly constructed, from a position by position perspective, the roster was heading into the season.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr — who deserves credit for coaching his butt off right now — is rotating all three centers at a fairly even pop. Again, it’s a developmental year. On Wednesday, it was Omari Spellman who impressed most for the Dubs.
In 18 minutes, Spellman had 13 points on 6-for- 6 shooting, pulled down seven rebounds, and dished out three assists and had two steals to boot. His net rating was a staggering plus-92. (His plus-minus was zero, so let’s not get carried away.)
Spellman has been solid so far this season as an energy guy off the bench, throwing his weight around against guys who probably don’t want to bang in the post and generally doing the little things that can help a team win.
He looked like a solid end- of-bench player — a firecracker that you can use when the occasion demands some spark.
Wednesday, he looked like a quality sixth man.
Let’s be real: everyone on this team is playing for a job. And Spellman, despite being 22, is a guy that Atlanta had already given up on. I want to see him a lot more in the days, weeks, and months (ugghhhh, we have months of this) to come, but Wednesday seemed like a best-case scenario. No matter how he plays going forward, don’t forget that he can do what he did in Houston.