The Golden State Warriors couldn’t make anything against the Dallas Mavericks.
It’s extremely easy to isolate offensive struggles and attribute it purely to that classic NBA maxim: “It’s a make or miss league.” That has an inkling of truth to it. NBA players are some of the best shot makers in the world, a collective 1% of the world’s population who can score almost at will, relative to the average person.
But NBA players are also human. There are nights when no matter how good the quality of the looks a team receives, the ball just refuses to enter the cup. Even Stephen Curry, who put up 27 points on 9-of-18 shooting from the field and 5-of-9 on threes, had a couple of unfortunate misses that were really difficult to ignore.
To illustrate the kind of horrific shooting night the Warriors had, look no further than their shooting splits after the first half, where they scored only 29 points.
On overall field goals, they shot 8-of-39 – 20.5%.
On threes, they shot 3-of-19, good for 15.8%. Two of those makes were from Curry.
After two quarters, the Warriors had an abysmal offensive rating of 58 points per 100 possessions.
Yikes.
That was only one side of the equation. While the Warriors struggled to shoot, the Mavericks were content with making theirs, one after another.
At the 8:40 mark of the 1st quarter, Curry drilled a three to pull the Warriors ahead by one point, 12-11. The Mavericks would then proceed to go on a massive 28-0 run that ended at the 11-minute mark of the 2nd quarter.
The Warriors failed to score for approximately 9 minutes and 40 seconds – just short of the length of an entire quarter. The Mavericks, on the other hand, would proceed to wax hot. The basketball gods deemed it an appropriate night to put a proverbial lid on the Warriors’ end of the floor, while transfiguring the Mavericks’ hoop to the size of a wide ocean.
Luka Dončić massively helped. Andrew Wiggins had the unfortunate task of trying to slow down the young Slovenian superstar. But Dončić was sublime, as expected. He put up 39 points on 15-of-23 shooting from the field in just 28 minutes of play. He also had 8 assists, having no problem with finding targets and exploiting the holes within the Warriors defense.
The lack of urgency on defense fed into the Warriors’ lack of energy on offense, and vice-versa. That is why it is extremely reductive to attribute the Warriors’ bad shooting night to just plain old “It’s a make or miss league.” Yes, the Warriors’ shots were looking like a bunch of Ben Simmons three-point attempts, but they also made the Mavericks seem like they had a bunch of Steph Currys on their team, as well.
There were plenty of mistakes to pick at on the defensive end of the floor. I noticed one particularly egregious one at the 10:30 mark of the 2nd quarter. See if you can also point it out:
Whose mistake was it? Was it Draymond Green jumping out toward Dončić, apparently blitzing him off the screen for what seemed like an attempt to double and run him off the line?
Was it Wiggins? He helped off the strong-side corner – generally considered a defensive faux pas – to tag the roll man.
Was it Kelly Oubre Jr? He seemed to be confused as to what the pick-and-roll coverage was on the possession. Was it a switch? Was it a trap? Oubre seemed like he floated in between, not knowing what to do and unable to make a decision on the fly.
Upon close inspection, it seemed like Oubre was at fault here – unusual, given that he is generally one of the more defensively stout operators on the team.
As Green and Oubre come together toward the screen, Green motions at Oubre, seemingly telling him to get ready to switch onto Willie Cauley-Stein, the roller. But Oubre fails to identify the switch. This forces Wiggins to tag the roller, opening up the corner shot for Dorian Finney-Smith. That is an extremely easy read for Dončić to make.
There were plenty of these defensive mistakes peppered throughout the Mavericks’ relentless onslaught. Here’s another one:
You expect much better from someone like Green, who generally deduces pick-and-roll situations with a sharpness and consistency expected from someone who is a former Defensive Player of the Year. But he commits a grave error.
Wiggins fights over the screen, trails Dončić, and is in position to close out. But Green jumps at Dončić nonetheless, and Dwight Powell is unlocked on the dive cut for the alley-oop. Mychal Mulder attempts to tag on the roll, but the momentum is just too much for him to stop.
Some possessions were a combination of defensive oversight and just much better offense from the Mavericks. In a huge game that involves seeding implications, small mistakes are magnified to a large degree, because more often than not, they can be the difference between getting two chances to make the playoffs and getting only one.
The mistake in the clip above isn’t as glaring. But watch Wiggins as the Mavericks run handoff action for Dončić up top. Green has to contain both the ballhandler and roller. With Kevon Looney as the “low” man on the weak side, it’s his job to step up and help on the roller. Wiggins is now left to “split the difference” – that is, to zone up on the weak side and cover both the slot and the corner.
But Wiggins is a tad too close to the paint, and while he makes the correct play – closing out on Maxi Kleber – he could’ve been in a much better position to make a quicker closeout for a better contest, had he avoided the trap of veering deep in the paint. Alas, he is a split-second too slow, and Kleber drills the shot over him.
It’s a minute detail compared to more egregious defensive lapses, such as the Warriors failing to account for Tim Hardaway Jr – a 38% shooter on threes this season – when they go to a 2-3 zone in this possession:
Or failing to play proper defense after a turnover:
The Warriors finished the game with 18 turnovers. Twelve of those were committed in the first half alone, including the one above that led to a Jalen Brunson corner three, the result of a Warriors defense being compromised due to Oubre nonchalantly jogging back.
Turnovers, defensive malaise, and nonexistent offensive production all became the perfect storm for another blowout loss for the Warriors.
“[We have to have] more aggressive and focused defense to start a game,” Curry said of the Warriors’ lackluster start against the Mavericks. “We’re a top 10 ranked defense for a reason. Most nights, you can rely on that to weather the storm a little bit, if offensively you’re not getting it going.”
The Warriors are still within the top 10 in terms of non-garbage time defensive efficiency – they allow 111.4 points per 100 possessions, 9th in the league, per Cleaning the Glass. But having a top defense won’t matter if garbage time starts as early as the beginning of the 4th quarter. At that point, it was clear the Warriors were woefully underprepared for the game, one that was considered perhaps their biggest of the season so far.
Head coach Steve Kerr acknowledged that his team didn’t go into the game as ready as they should’ve been, and directed the blame toward himself.
“I was concerned about the defense and the level of intensity and preparation and competitiveness,” Kerr said. “I did not have them ready to play. Clearly it was the biggest game of the year, and it was over before it started.
“I thought we were beyond [blowouts]. We took another one on the chin tonight… I’m really disappointed in myself for not having them better prepared. I’m disappointed in the way we just didn’t meet the challenge as a group.”
It should be noted that the Warriors have not practiced since April 8, the second day of a two-day rest period after a huge win over the Milwaukee Bucks. Since then, they have had 11 games in 19 days, including two sets of back-to-backs and a 5-game east coast roadtrip that, according to Kerr, was “exhausting.”
In lieu of practice, Kerr has had the team come in for meetings, perhaps to nail down and finalize offensive sets, break down personnel and matchups, and polish defensive schemes catered toward their particular opponent on that given day.
It was pretty clear that whatever the Warriors had planned defensively against the Mavericks didn’t work.
With 10 games left, the Warriors can pretty much kiss the 6th seed – and the perk of an outright playoff berth that comes with it – goodbye. The focus shifts toward obtaining a place in the higher play-in bracket – the 8th or 7th seed – which will give them two chances at clinching a playoff spot, with at least one game of homecourt advantage.
“You only need to win one game [if you’re 7th or 8th],” Curry said. “Then you have at least one home game… It’s not an ideal situation, but like I said, 10 games is going to be a sprint to the finish line. We still have a great opportunity in front of us to seize not only good momentum and [play] good basketball down the stretch, but get in the best position possible to be in that final eight, no matter how we get there.”
The Warriors will have a relatively easy 10-game schedule down the stretch. They will face weaker teams in the Western Conference seven times: Minnesota, Houston, New Orleans (thrice), and Oklahoma City (twice). The potentially huge roadblocks will come against the top two teams in the West (Utah and Phoenix in a back-to-back) and a team they are in the play-in doldrums with (Memphis).
That is a good opportunity to finish strong with a winning record. If the chips fall in their favor – winning while San Antonio, Memphis, and Portland above them falter – the advantage will be theirs.
But in order for that advantage to materialize, the Warriors will definitely have to go back to the drawing board and perhaps hold a practice session, after a prolonged period of not doing so. That is with good reason, since a compressed schedule typically doesn’t allow much practice for NBA teams.
Combine that with injuries and COVID-19 protocols, and the Warriors don’t really have the luxury of going through each and every detail on the court with a fine-toothed comb, something that can only be achieved through a productive session of practice.
Watching their defense against the Mavericks, they most certainly need it. – Rappler.com
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