The Warriors haven’t had this kind of consistent success since the days of Rick Barry in the 70’s, and the fans have been tortured long enough; they deserve this, regularly being one of the loudest arenas in the league. Turning down Kevin Love, Golden State is riding their current core, all following the coattails of Curry’s mind-shattering shooting ability, into the darkness of the future. With a new coach and an engaged front office, improved from earlier seasons, there’s no sense of doom anymore. And that’s all a battered franchise asks for.
2014 in review
While the Warriors brought in Andre Iguodala, defensive stopper from Denver, people were convinced Golden State was about to make the leap due to the team’s offense and the backcourt bombing of Thompson and Curry. Yet it was their defense that controlled opponents. Bogut was fairly healthy and played as much as he has since 2011. Draymond Green, a second round pick, improved considerably and became one of the league’s underrated defensive forces. Curry and Klay hit 484 three-pointers combined, but their offense was rated as merely the 12th best while their defense was 4th overall in a tough conference filled with exquisite offenses.
The Warriors were blessed with some of the best lineups in the league when they mixed up their best defenders, versatile players, and shooters. The starting lineup was one of the best, and their 51 win total underrated how good the team was overall — their point differential suggested 54 wins. They had all the makings of a playoff Cinderella, but alas: Bogut got injured before the playoffs and after a hard-fought series with the Clippers they succumbed to the inevitable.
Changes
Exit: Jermaine O’Neal, Jordan Crawford, Steve Blake, Kent Bazemore, Toney Douglas, Hilton Armstrong, MarShon Brooks, Dewayne Dedmon.
Enter: Shaun Livingston, Festus Ezeli (back from injury), Leandro Barbosa, Brandon Rush.
The Warriors cleaned out the debris from the bench, mostly their backup center and a couple guys they tried at backup point, and will bring back largely the same crew. Livingston will have the first guard off the bench role, Barbosa’s the fourth guard, and Ezeli has hopefully fully recovered from his knee injury. Golden State retained more of its rotation players than anyone save for a couple others like the Spurs.
Player spotlight
Draymond Green is the next in a long line of successful second round picks, and like many of his ilk he’s an unorthodox player. Via the bar chart below, he’s a low usage, inefficient player, and the plays he does use are rife with turnovers. What’s to like here? He takes a high number of three-pointers despite few shots and he appears to be active, getting to the line and driving at average rates with an above average offensive rebound percentage. But there’s something interesting here: he rarely touches the ball, yet he has an average assist rate. Subtracting out true-shoot attempts from frontcourt touches, you can calculate a rough measure of how many passes are converted into assists. Green is ranked ninth overall there among players with at least 1000 minutes where only Durant, Curry, Tyreke Evans, Kendall Marshall, Chris Paul, Noah, Love, and Lawson rated higher. Note those are all point guards and all-star type cogs. He’s a great passer and with his activity and outside shooting he has the makings of an ideal glue guy.
Draymond Green blows up the defensive stats, however. He’s a very good defensive rebounder, and he splits his time at forward positions as a hybrid player. He has a high block rate, impressive for a 6′ 7″ guy, and few players collect more steals than him per possession. In fact, no one else equaled his proficiency in both steals and blocks, and only DeMarcus Cousins was close. And historically, he’s made it onto this list of legendary defenders. He was coded as a small forward, but that was probably a mistake. He played as more of a power forward last year in smallball lineups, often with Harrison Barnes. His rim protection numbers were pretty solid considering his size and how often he was on the perimeter. Defensive metrics love his overall defense too, and he’s now known as a plus defender. The high foul rate is a little troubling, but he’s still coming off the bench.
The only issue Green has for his role is his shooting. He’s used a lot as a stretch 4, and his outside shooting is paramount. In college, he was shooting near 36% from outside in his last seasons, and hopefully he can continue to improve: 33% last season wasn’t enough to boost his efficiency. He was only a 70% shooter at the line in college, however, and that sinks his efficiency too. He’s not a standstill corner shooter like other role players; he hits them from everywhere. Another troubling trend is that he’s a below average finisher near the rim, and this happened his first season too.
You can see a selection of his field goals in the playlist below (link’s also here) against the Phoenix Suns. In the first video, he catches the ball near the three-point line and drives quickly to the rim and makes a semi-wild layup. He repeats the same play in the second clip, except that he throws the shot out of balance over a defender. He cuts to the rim for an open shot in the third video; his off-ball action is a large part of his game. Finally, you can see his three-point shot in the last video. His form is a little awkward and he jumps pretty far forward with the release. This is probably why he’s better off as a power forward. The second playlist has a couple of his assists. He’s a good, quick passer who will look for open targets, which is something you don’t get out of too many power forwards. Passing can be an overlooked part of the game because when you start an action like in his first video there, driving, you draw defensive attention and you create better shots for other players. Green hits Speights for an open shot at the rim there even though he’s going at high speed. His vision is displayed in the second video. Immediately as he catches the pass, he’s cocking back to throw it to Bogut under the rim for a close shot.
For Draymond’s defense, I have three of his blocks below (link’s also here) versus the Miami Heat. Battier tries to sneak past him in the first video, but Green notices and blocks him at the rim. Even though he’s 6′ 7″, he acts as another rim protector and swats away Chalmers’ reverse layup. Chalmers tries to score at the rim again in the last video, and Green comes in from the weakside, goes up with two hands, and stops him. This is why we should pay attention to wingspan and standing reach, not how high the top of your head is from the ground: his standing reach is just big enough for a power forward and his 7′ 1.25″ wingspan is actually average and lets him pillage passing lanes and block shots.
Role players are often disregarded because scoring is flashy and easy to digest. I disagree with ESPN’s assertion that, “His role is easier to master than first-rounder Harrison Barnes’.” Defense is not easy to master, and neither is a role where you master multiple positions. He has a strange hybrid role guarding a variety of players, shooting a ton of three-pointers, and blocking shots at the rim. He’s essentially positionless and he’s loved by advanced stats like plus/minus. And Hollinger saw him as a steal in his advanced stats draft rating, ranking him fourth among the bigs. Hopefully, he can fix his three-point percentage and Golden State understands his value.
2015 projected
Golden State was blessed with a mix of shooters and passers, but unfortunately Mark Jackson insisted on running an old-style offense with more isolation and post-ups, even for guys like Klay Thompson. With a new coach, one who witnessed the progressive basketball of the Suns and Spurs, there’s some optimism that their offense will be unbridled, but there’s a lot of open discussion about bringing Iguodala off the bench and I fear this is an indication they don’t understand why they were even good in the first place. From 2013 to 2014, their adjusted point differential jumped from 1.3 to 5.2. They were an elite team because of their defense, and they were at their best with Iguodala on the court, referencing the team’s net rating from stats.NBA.com. They were famously 10-9 when he didn’t play and 41-22 when he did. Perhaps they want to save Iguodala’s body for the playoffs and want to stagger his minutes so his ballhandling skills are better utilized with the second unit, but they’d be wrong in thinking the team would be fine if he had a lesser role and Barnes played ahead of him.
The Warriors had a separation between their good and bad players like the economic inequality in a developing country. They were amazing when five of their best six players were on the court: Curry, Klay Thompson, Iguodala, Green, Lee, and Bogut. In 1128 minutes, they scored at 117.1 offensive rating, which would have led the league by a mile, and held opponents to 98.5 points per 100 possessions, which again would have led the league. They made shots like the Miami Heat but picked up offensive rebounds, and they made other lineups look like the 76ers on offense.
Golden State returns with the same set of players, and they may have snagged a good third guard: Livingston. He’s a poor outside shooter, but he’s another good defender with size for multiple positions. Jackson actually got his post-up guard, but it’s a year too late. Pairing him with Iguodala on the bench is not ideal though; Iguodala’s another shaky shooter. And Green may not be able to find his own accuracy either. One would prefer that at least one of their two elite outside shooters stay on the court with Livingston, who was best last year with smallball lineups where everyone except the center could shoot three’s.
One fear a person may have about the roster is that Curry’s been unusually healthy the past couple seasons and that those faulty ankles from the past could reappear. He’s the driving force of an offense that would look empty without him. As much as people love Klay Thompson, he’s not an off-the-bounce creator, while their other wings don’t inject into offensive oomph either — Iguodala and Green, for instance, are better on defense. What makes Curry different from other great shooters of the past is his ability to dribble, stop on a dime, and hit a three-pointer, reliably, with a hand in his face. Three-pointers used to be a careful shot you’d take with your feet set and standstill. On-the-run three’s were seen as desperation heaves, but Curry’s made it into a real weapon. No one was close to the number of pull-up three’s Curry took last season, and he did it on one of the best percentages either. From the graph below, he’s a true outlier.
The other big injury fear is Andrew Bogut, who played his most minutes in years. The Warriors were unusually reliant on such a brittle player, backing him up with a veteran, Jermaine O’Neal, who missed games with the same frequency. Festus Ezeli, back after being out 18 months with a knee injury, will be their first center off the bench, but the team will still probably rely on a lot of small lineups with David Lee as the center. But as John Hollinger once said, the problem isn’t the backup; it’s the backup’s backup. If Bogut is out, it forces the use of significantly negative players like Speights. This destroys both their defense and their offense. Bogut’s health will decide their playoff seeding.
The only other way the Warriors could screw the team up is putting more of an emphasis on Harrison Barnes. He speaks to the dangers of falling in love with potential, athleticism, and a few games in the playoffs blown out of proportion. He’s an athletic forward with significantly below average scoring skills, little playmaking, and none of the defense you can get from Iggy and Green. Everything speaks to him being a deep rotation player or a bench piece, and perhaps one day he can add to his skills and rise above that, but not now. If you want a stretch 4, you can look to Draymond Green, whose greatest weakness is the same shooting efficiency Barnes has. He was used partly as a minutes eater last year, but 2200 minutes from this guy is too much for a team with title aspirations. The Warriors were awful when he played, and of course that’s partly by design since Golden State didn’t mix its bench as much as other teams, but even with adjustments Golden State was a lot worse when he played. There’s no arguing that point at this time.
David Lee fills out the starting lineup. He’s an odd mix of the sort of skills you want from an ideal role player or an unheralded guy: he’s a great passer for his position, he has some range, and he grabs an alarming number of rebounds for a good rebounding team. However, he was infamously mocked for his interior defense at a stats conference, and the claim that he “steals” rebounds from his teammates to pad his stats are probably true. He has one of the worst effects on teammate defensive rebound totals, and his total effect on defensive rebounding is actually pretty lukewarm, ranking him around the likes of big men like Joel Freeland and wings like Evan Turner. He’s not a glaring negative; some people are probably too critical. But given his age and skills, the team would do best by moving on without him — yet he’s being paid about 15 million dollars a year until 2016.
Summary
With a new coach and system, Golden State’s offense could get unclogged, but I’m cautious in these changes given their insistence on benching Iguodala and their love of Harrison Barnes. What made the team special last year was their defense, but Bogut is a huge injury risk and Curry/Thompson, using conservative odds, are not likely to repeat their huge minutes yet again. It’s a thin bench, and there’s no confidence they’ll be able to ride their best players again. However, with Curry’s shooting and what might be the strongest defensive quartet in the league — Thompson, Iguodala, Green, and Bogut — they’ll be just as good, and with a truly better offensive system and some luck with health they could fight for something like the second seed. But conservatism is the smart bet in predicting a season.
Wins: 53
Losses: 29
Conference rank: 4th (tied)
League offense rank: 14th
League defense rank: 2nd
Edited 10/27/14
