I almost did a double-take a week ago after the OKC loss at home on December 2nd, when Steve Kerr was asked about his closing lineup during the improbable comeback — at the time, it was improbable, especially in the absence of one Wardell Stephen Curry — which included Pat Spencer, Buddy Hield, Seth Curry, Moses Moody or Gary Payton II depending on offense/defense, and Draymond Green:
You just go on with the guys who have really played the best and you feel good about and we stayed with Gary because he’s our best on-ball defender. Buddy is also better defensively than given credit for and we wanted him on the ball and we wanted his floor spacing. He got a good look late. He was mad at himself for not knocking it down, that corner shot, but Buddy’s a great shooter and so we were just going with the guys that we felt gave us the best chance.
Wow, Steve, Buddy is better defensively than given credit for? 🤨
I’ve been doing “honest recaps” of Warriors games on the YouTube channel lately, and even my live notes from each Watch Party also show: Hield’s on-ball defense has, indeed, improved.
Even though he routinely gets clowned on or voted against in commenter polls, Buddy has even improved in the turnover department, committing just six turnovers in a span of eight games since his four giveaways on November 19th at Miami.
Before Miami, he’d committed 16 turnovers in 16 games. Incidentally, that Miami game is ironic because Spencer went 1-for-9 on two-pointers and was driving me mad for the many missed jumpers in the painted area while I was doing play-by-play on that live chat — more on this in a future article coming up, but I talked about that in last night’s live version of the Warriors-Bulls honest recap.
Said Kerr after the win in Chicago, asked about difficult rotation decisions with the team getting healthier soon:
We get Steph back and we got Pat playing at the level he is, BP (Brandin Podziemski)’s picked it up and Melt (De’Anthony Melton) is a hell of a player, so we got a lot of guys who can play. And the thing that I like about it is it creates competition. And I think what Buddy has done over the last five, six games, Buddy’s a guy who understands the league. Ron (Adams) always says it’s a “show me” league. Show me how hard you’re playing, show me the production…
(Hield) took the red eye, got in in the morning and just absolutely played his butt off that night. And I challenged him a couple weeks ago to take care of the ball. He’s taking care of the ball and this is how the league works. I mean, there’s always somebody knocking down the door trying to get your job and so it’s on everybody to just compete and bring their best effort, bring the best effort for the team, and I think we’ve got a lot of guys doing that. And you can feel the energy. We’re playing with a different level of energy the last few nights.
Only thing Buddy needs to do now is, according, to Jimmy Butler, hit a corner three:
This is the full interview for Steve and Jimmy, postgame Bulls:
Below the paywall is a possible random coincidence Buudy had with Al Horford. If you’re looking for the full transcripts from Chicago, you can find them on our YouTube channel in the Comments of each video interview.