OAKLAND–The Golden State Warriors are 0-1, but after blowing a 17-point lead in the team’s season-opener against the Houston Rockets on Tuesday evening, there’s little doubt the reigning champs will fade anytime soon.
After all, Golden State is the largest championship favorite in American sports history, and one loss to a team that’s expected to provide them with some of their stiffest competition come the NBA playoffs isn’t going to change that projection.
After Tuesday’s loss, head coach Steve Kerr said the Warriors ran out of juice, as the Rockets used a 34-20 fourth quarter to sneak out of Oracle Arena with a 122-121 win. It’s often difficult to glean big-picture perspective from early-season NBA contests, but Tuesday’s game afforded us a handful of important takeaways.
1. Never underestimate the value of Draymond Green
In 28 minutes on the floor, Green racked up nine points, 11 rebounds and 13 assists in an all-around effort that led Kerr to say Green was the Warriors’ best player on Tuesday night. In the waning minutes of the Warriors’ loss, Green’s absence was felt as Kerr decided to play four guards and use Kevin Durant at the five, an unconventional move that was a response to the Rockets’ smaller lineup.
Golden State simply had no answer for Houston down the stretch, and after the game, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Durant indicated that a lack of defensive communication, not a lack of conditioning, was the Warriors’ downfall in the fourth quarter. When Green is on the floor, communication isn’t just an expectation. It’s a demand, and every player is going to be held accountable.
Green’s knee injury is apparently serious enough for the forward to get an MRI, and Golden State will reportedly have the results in hand on Thursday. If Green is forced to miss an extensive period of time, the Warriors may find themselves in a rather unsteady position considering he’s the key to the fourth quarter lineup Kerr likes to end games with.
Curry, Thompson and Durant may all be more talented on the offensive end, and Thompson and Durant even have defensive traits that might be superior to Green’s, but the forward’s two-way prowess is practically unparalleled, and the energy he provides is invaluable.
2. It’s easy to forget how many hats Andre Iguodala wears
The 2015 NBA Finals MVP sat out of Tuesday evening’s game with a back injury that doesn’t sound too serious.
In fact, after the game Kerr said that if the Warriors were playing in the Finals, Iguodala would have been on the floor against the Rockets. But alas, it was game one of 82, and Golden State had no reason to push the envelope with a 33-year-old defensive Swiss Army Knife who is also a key cog in the Warriors’ end-of-game lineup.
Iguodala is a fixture in the Warriors’ second unit, and his defense allows Thompson to take a breather on nights when the Warriors battle versatile offensive stars like Houston’s James Harden. Had Iguodala been on the floor in the fourth quarter on Tuesday, it’s hard to imagine the Warriors surrendering as many easy buckets as they did, or failing to rotate as many times as they did. Those breakdowns don’t happen with Iguodala and Green, but they did happen on Tuesday.
The Warriors probably would have been able to overcome the Rockets’ late charge if either Green or Iguodala was on the floor, but with two of the top three defenders on the team out, Golden State couldn’t contain a sharp-shooting Houston team.
3. The Warriors are molding Jordan Bell for next summer
When he checked in at the midway point of the first quarter, it came as a mild surprise. But there Bell was, a second round draft pick out of Oregon, living a dream he thought might never materialize.
Bell took the minutes normally awarded to JaVale McGee, and later Kerr said that it was simply a matchup preference.
But make no mistake, the Houston Rockets are going to be around next summer when the Warriors are battling to represent the Western Conference in the NBA Finals, and they’ll need Bell to be around, too. Bell might even be a better role player than McGee against a Cavaliers team that’s sometimes used smaller, more athletic lineups to try to counter the Warriors, so rest assured, Golden State will be preparing him for that potential series as well.
It’s easy to see why the Warriors think Bell can fit with their style of play. He’s a pogo stick in the paint, a big blessed with vision, and a defensive stopper who can play alongside Durant and Green and give Golden State the type of athletic length NBA executives salivate over.
It’s also easy to see why Bell will ride the bench plenty of times throughout the season. The rookie drafted 38th overall is far from polished on the offensive end of the floor, he missed on a handful of defensive rotations, and the speed of the game appeared to overwhelm him a bit on Tuesday night. But that doesn’t mean Kerr will let Bell improve in practice alone.
Bell can be an asset for the Warriors in May and June, and Golden State knows that. It’s why they’ll let growing pains take place before national audiences, and why Kerr laughed off a turnover on Tuesday night when Durant clanked a ball off Bell’s shoulder that landed out of bounds.
4. Those Kevon Looney minutes were no fluke
If you had Looney earning crucial minutes during the Rockets’ comeback, you should probably start playing the lottery more often.
The third-year big man was hardly a factor for the Warriors during his first two seasons in the NBA, but on Tuesday night, Kerr played Looney, not starting center Zaza Pachulia or McGee in the fourth quarter. Looney wound up playing eight minutes for the Warriors, but they came at a key moment that suggested the Warriors have more faith in him than they used to.
After practice on Tuesday, Kerr confirmed that’s true.
Kerr said the Warriors owe it to their young players to develop them as much as possible, and he also said that he wouldn’t hesitate to play Looney in big moments this year, especially after Looney enjoyed such a strong training camp.
While Looney doesn’t do much to impact the game on the offensive end of the floor, Kerr was encouraged with the way Looney defended pick and rolls, and specifically with how he defended Harden. It’s hard to say what type of a role Looney will have because the season is still so young, but based on Kerr’s comments on Tuesday, it sounds like this year’s role will be a larger one.
5. Golden State isn’t in shape yet
Kerr didn’t want to use the China trip as an excuse, and the Warriors’ players refused to even admit fatigue played a role at the end of Tuesday’s game, but it didn’t look like this team was ready to tackle a full 48-minute game just yet.
Green brought the energy, Green dove for loose balls and Green provided the team with impact hustle plays that energized the bench. But when Green left the game, the Warriors lost their edge.
Every Warriors’ starter outside of Thompson finished with a positive plus-minus (Thompson finished even in 38 minutes), but those plus-minus numbers looked much better at the start of the fourth quarter than they did at the end.
Curry, Thompson and Durant preferred to blame defensive rotations for the Warriors’ late-game lapses, but shoddy rotations and a lack of movement on the offensive end of the floor are a direct result of tired legs and fatigue. The two go hand-in-hand, and on Tuesday night, it cost the Warriors.
The good news? The Warriors don’t need to play four great quarters of basketball to beat most teams. In fact, they needed three good quarters and one lousy one to come within one point of one of the NBA’s best squads.