Predictably, the loudest voices and so-called aggregators or “communities” on social media have been clamoring to trade the latest Warrior who has had a string of bad games, in this case Draymond Green.
Granted, it is actually trade season and even I have suggested that Green be re-labeled out of “untouchable” status if things continue to trend this way towards January 15th, when Jonathan Kuminga’s contract can be utilized in a trade. But practically speaking and on-court-basketball-wise, that’s ludicrous unless one of the players you get back in a trade is legitimately worthy of All-Defensive Team votes.
It’s easy to point to what Dray does wrong on offense or jump on the finger-pointing bandwagon and claim that he is expendable. This is primarily because of Jimmy Butler’s recent prowess in iso situations, particularly with one Wardell Stephen Curry resting on the bench.
But the fact of the matter is, there are still many holes in the Warriors’ defense, although obviously it improved some in the win against Phoenix.
Steve Kerr after practice, which was really just a film session, yesterday:
Frankly, we’ve had some bad luck, couple of close games recently. So I thought the bounces went our way last night. Gillespie misses the three from the corner, but it shouldn’t have come to that. We had a seven-point lead with like less than two minutes left. Didn’t handle it very well.
During the Watch Party livestream, and I have this in the notes in the Comments section, Steph, Gary Payton II and Jimmy connected on a beautiful tic-tac-toe — I also went over these passing-heavy plays in the recap. The Suns took the ball out of bounds and found Devin Booker on a slant-like football route. He turned the corner and finished with an and-one against Quinten Post, who was desperately trying to help.
I literally wrote, “SHEESH, IN THREE SECONDS,” in my notes.
Here’s Kerr’s description:
We just watched the final three minutes of the game for that reason, to see both offense and defense. I wanted the guys to see it and there were a couple of just mindless plays where we score and we’re all standing there instead of having urgency to get back. And they race the ball up the floor and we’re trailing the play. There’s no way that can happen.
And so we just have to be sharper and more on edge and that’s an area we miss Draymond, for sure, just his frenetic energy in clutch situations. It looked careless to me on the tape. The three-point play from Book, both Gary and BP got ahead of the ball instead of behind the ball and now it’s Book coming downhill, almost one-on-one. It was really like, he had Steph in front of him and Trayce trailing the play. (Booker) ends up with an and-one. If we just sprint back, we’re in great shape. So that’s not scheme, that’s just awareness. And so we’ve gotta be better with that.
Trayce Jackson-Davis thinks this is an “easy fix”:
There’s a few times where we didn’t get back on defense the way that we should have and those are easy fixes. We just gotta know who we’re matching up with, especially when we start doing the offensive-defensive lineups, so making sure that when we come into the game, we’re talking and communicating on who we’re guarding.
Now, I’ve already (on here, too) attributed four losses to lack of urgency (MIL, IND, ORL, POR). Looking at the standings right now, the Warriors could easily be 18-11 instead of 14-15.
But that would only put them in 7th. So not only do they need to treat Orlando tonight with some urgency, not just from the jump but also even if they are up seven with two minutes to go — and Dray might’ve helped with that against PHX — they have to do more than that.
The whole Jimmy iso thing now finally appearing as the second head of a two-headed snake and that should help with the extra oomph they need to get over the hump.
So, it’s urgency and more control on offense.
Incidentally, related to the Jimmy iso stuff, Steve also had the reason why he thinks Golden State can’t just easily replicate the 23-8 finish, at least not right now:
We were playing with Draymond at the 5 and we found the spacing, the iso spacing for Jimmy, let him go to work. And we got the movement for Steph. We had the floor spread with Draymond at the 5. Our offensive rating was really high. This year we haven’t played Draymond at the 5 as much and we haven’t played that lineup, frankly, as much, the one with Moses (Moody) and (Brandin Podziemski) starting. That’s for a variety of reasons. I won’t go into detail on that, but we are trying to stay bigger, play Trayce more, play QP, more Draymond at the 4. We think that’s good for us long term, but we have not been nearly as good offensively playing bigger as we were a year ago, playing small.
Below is the video from practice yesterday, which also includes Trayce and Podziemski, with its transcripts behind the paywall, which will he lifted next time there is another transcript. As such, the transcripts from the previous article is now available to all.
As I mentioned in the last post, I still want to talk about Curry’s individual defense so far this season, which will draw from his quotes postgame PHX-GSW, but that will have to wait…
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00:00 So what was the day about?
00:02 STEVE KERR, PRACTICE, DAY BEFORE ORL-GSW: Just film. We just watched film and we did our Orlando prep so that we didn’t have to come in and have a shoot around tomorrow.
00:10 When you look back at it last night’s game, what were your take-aways, especially after Draymond had to leave?
00:17 We fought. I loved the level of competition, the grit. Didn’t love the execution down the stretch, especially defensively. We didn’t handle things that well, but we were due a little luck. Frankly, we’ve had some bad luck, couple of close games recently. So I thought the bounces went our way last night. Gillespie misses the three from the corner, but it shouldn’t have come to that. We had a seven-point lead with like less than two minutes left. Didn’t handle it very well.
00:54 Was Jonathan and Al able to practice today?
00:57 Al will not play tomorrow. JK should be available tomorrow. He was here today, so he’s feeling better.
01:04 What’s going on with Seth?
01:06 Seth is just dealing with a minor injury. I’m not even gonna speculate on what to call it because I’ll just confuse you guys and myself, but he’s dealing with a minor injury. (Inaudible)
01:22 Exactly.
01:24 What’d you see from Jimmy the last couple games? I know you mentioned in Phoenix there was a couple film sessions about just how to get him more involved. Just what have you seen in that regard and how do you feel like he really responded?
01:34 Just him being himself, being aggressive. He has such a great feel for the moment, for the game and I think the last two games he’s shown that he’s understood, he needed to be more assertive, more aggressive, and he’s been excellent.
01:50 Has that been a combination of just him being more aggressive as a scorer and you guys getting him to the ball more or how has that–?
01:56 Yeah, I don’t think we’re really doing anything differently. I think it’s just mindset for him and for our other guys, getting him the ball and playing through him.
02:05 Seems like Podz has sort of (inaudible) recently.
02:10 The thing we hammer home with him all the time is get off the ball, don’t dominate the ball. He’s a guy who has a feel for the game and can create advantages with his movement, running through the catch, getting off the ball early and freeing somebody else up for a drive. And when he’s focused on that instead of dominating the ball in pick and roll and holding it on onto it too long, then he’s a totally different player.
02:43 Gary said something last night. He said that when Draymond went out, he said, we knew we all had of make up for his absence. And what he said was that he cleaned up a lot of our messes.
02:55 Yeah.
02:56 That they rely on that almost.
02:57 Right.
02:59 Wouldn’t you say it’s a lazy way to play it because you got him back there so he can, but when you hear something like that, what do you think?
03:05 Draymond is an unbelievable defender, gets us organized frequently, just bails us out, so I agree with Gary. So you remove Draymond from the equation and obviously you not only miss his individual defense, but exactly what Gary said, just the plays that he makes up for someone’s mistakes, now we gotta cover up that mistake and we had one late that I know we would’ve handled a lot better. Quinten got a switch on Booker and we were confused as to where the double was supposed to come from and Booker went right by QP and laid it in. And that was a perfect example of where Draymond would’ve gotten everybody organized. We would’ve doubled from the right spot and we gotta handle that better when Draymond’s not there.
03:58 I was gonna ask, Trayce played about 15 minutes there, 15 minutes last two games. What progress have you seen from him? What does he doing doing better that’s allowing him (to play more)?
04:08 I like playing him in short bursts. He’s at his best when he’s really sprinting the floor. The modern game is harder than the older game. We’re asking guys to crash every play, sprint the floor, run to the corners. Especially for big guys, it’s tough to play a stretch of eight straight minutes if you’re doing all that. This is one of the reasons we’re playing a lot of guys, because you saw what Gui did in six minutes last night, got at least two offensive boards, a couple hoops, but to play that hard, when Trayce can focus on that for four-minute stretches and we just give them four-minute stretches during the game, the level at which he plays is really high. And I think that’s what he’s focused on and that’s what we’re focused on too.
05:00 How much attention did you pay to the standings at this stage?
05:03 To the what?
05:04 The standings.
05:04 Oh, I look every day. Yeah, I looked this morning and it’s, we all know where we are and, look, our goal coming into the season was to be a Top Four seed and I still think it’s well within our reach, but it can be daunting if you look and you go, man, we’re five, six games back, but we know how fast things can flip if we can take care of our business and find some momentum because everybody else is gonna go through tough stretches, too. And there’s, I don’t know, can’t do the math offhand, how many games left? About 51 or 50, yeah, for us. Where are we, 29? 53. 53, so I was not a math major at Arizona, but I figured that out anyway.
05:56 But you spent most of the time this year trying to get the offense where you wanted to.
05:59 Yeah.
06:00 And what do you– how much of that is dependent on what you’re getting from Jimmy especially when Steph’s off the floor?
06:08 Yeah, that’s the balance we found a year ago where, but we were playing small last year. We were playing with Draymond at the 5 and we found the spacing, the iso spacing for Jimmy, let him go to work. And we got the movement for Steph. We had the floor spread with Draymond at the 5. Our offensive rating was really high. This year we haven’t played Draymond at the 5 as much and we haven’t played that lineup, frankly, as much, the one with Moses and BP starting. That’s for a variety of reasons. I won’t go into detail on that, but we are trying to stay bigger, play Trayce more, play QP, more Draymond at the 4. We think that’s good for us long term, but we have not been nearly as good offensively playing bigger as we were a year ago, playing small.
07:04 And on the other side, defense has been, for lack of a better word, bipolar.
07:11 Yeah, I agree. I agree.
07:14 (Inaudible) at other times, you look at it and you go, what are they doing out there?
07:16 Yeah.
07:17 And it seems like especially lately, some of the worst has been late in games.
07:22 Right.
07:23 Is there a specific thing that you do about late-game defense that differs from the rest of the game?
07:29 Not really. Last night’s film, we just watched the final three minutes of the game for that reason, to see both offense and defense. I wanted the guys to see it and there were a couple of just mindless plays where we score and we’re all standing there instead of having urgency to get back. And they race the ball up the floor and we’re trailing the play. There’s no way that can happen. And so we just have to be sharper and more on edge and that’s an area we miss Draymond, for sure, just his frenetic energy in clutch situations. It looked careless to me on the tape. The three-point play from Book, both Gary and BP got ahead of the ball instead of behind the ball and now it’s Book coming downhill, almost one-on-one. It was really like, he had Steph in front of him and QP trailing the play. Book gets it– or it was Trayce, actually, trailing the play. He ends up with an and-one. If we just sprint back, we’re in great shape. So that’s not scheme, that’s just awareness. And so we’ve gotta be better with that.
08:45 You talked so much about the schedule and the schedule is the schedule for everybody. Do you think you guys will be able to take a collective deep breath once you get back off this last East Coast swing and have all these home games that are kind of piled up, get into the rhythm that everybody (inaudible)?
09:03 I hope so. We said that before the last home stand, too. We finally finished our crazy start to the season, whatever it was, 15 games in 29 days, 28 days, and we came home and then we lost a bunch of home games. So it has to be action and not words.
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09:22 How was the film session?
09:24 TRAYCE JACKSON-DAVIS: The film session was good. We watched the last three minutes of the game. There’s a few times where we didn’t get back on defense the way that we should have and those are easy fixes. We just gotta know who we’re matching up with, especially when we start doing the offensive-defensive lineups, so making sure that when we come into the game, we’re talking and communicating on who we’re guarding.
09:45 Was there any sense of relief winning a close games?
09:49 Yes, absolutely. We’ve been in dog fights the last few games and so finally getting over that hump and getting in the win column again. We’ve been working really hard and it’s finally to see the hard work pay off.
10:02 How comfortable do you feel in your role right now? Steve talked about, kind of wants to play you in four-minute bursts, so you can go all-out. And how different is it preparing for that rather than maybe playing 25, 30 minutes?
10:14 Yeah. Coach is always going to reward guys who play hard and so being able to come into the game and just play hard and just going all out, doing what I have to do, rebound, play with energy, just asserting myself into the game. And then if I’m playing well, then usually he extends those minutes. And with me, that’s all I can control. I can control when I’m in the game and I’m just gonna continue to run the floor, try to block shots, play with energy, and do stuff of that nature.
10:47 What do you think changes the most when Draymond’s not in the game like last night, offensively?
10:58 I think that the only thing that really changed was, obviously, we missed him out there. He’s a competitor. That was the first thing he said to us when he came in at halftime. He was like, please gimme this game. Please get me– like, we got you. We got you. But I think that the emphasis on getting Jimmy the ball was huge in the third quarter and the second quarter, but I don’t think that was necessarily a Draymond thing because Draymond’s always talking about getting Jimmy the ball. But I just think that we just put an emphasis on that more, even when he was out. And so I think that in those instances where Steph’s out and it’s Jimmy, I thought that we did a really good job of doing that.
11:47 How does spacing as a big man, like spacing’s been a big thing for you guys, how does that kind of work as a big man, too?
11:54 Yeah. Jimmy’s a competitor. He draws two. He’s kinda like Steph in that nature. If it’s one-on-one, he’s gonna go at the guy and I think that being a big man in this offense is wonderful. And you got Steph whose gravity is the best in the league and then you got Jimmy who, if Steph’s in, they gotta double one of the two and you get dunks, you get layups, you get dump-offs. And so I don’t think spacing is relatively something that we have to worry about when we’re playing, but at the same time having those two guys on the floor pays dividends to our offense.
12:31 Trayce, how often do you check the standings?
12:36 I check them relatively often, but obviously when you’re in a losing streak, you don’t really like looking at it and getting back in the win column’s good, but starting in probably late January, early February is when we really start to lock in on that.
12:53 And when you look at you guys, where you guys have been mostly, 8th, 9th in that area there, what are the things that tell you that you guys are gonna finish high?
13:03 I think that just the way that we’re playing, sometimes teams that are 8th, 9th, especially, like back in the day or teams that aren’t in the playoff hunt or barely in the playoff hunt, and I think with us, the difference between us and those teams is that we’re losing really close games. There’s four or five games that two or three points that could have swung the other way and we could be in third or fourth place. And we just gotta keep chipping away at this thing and continue to work, continue to look at the film, continue to get better. And I know Ws are gonna come our way.
13:38 Is the mentality for late-game defense different than it is for the first, second, third quarter?
13:45 Yes. I think that just depends on what’s happening in the game. I remember last night, the three pointers, the 3, sometimes it’s no 3D. Sometimes we wanna foul before. It all depends and giving up a layup sometimes doesn’t hurt you late game, but it really just depends on the situation, obviously. That final play, we really don’t wanna foul. We really wanted them to get a tough shot and I think we did a great job of that.
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14:18 BRANDIN PODZIEMSKI: Could have lost the game last night. We’re up seven a few times within the last four minutes. A couple times just didn’t get matched up after a make, so we just watched those, but yeah, we just watched the last four minutes of the game and just nitpick those things.
14:37 Late game, do you (inaudible) the mentality different than the first, second, third quarter?
14:43 Well, of course. Situation’s magnified a lot more because it means more. I think the mentality’s the same throughout, but you just dig in a little bit more knowing it’s the last part of the game.
14:57 How often do you check the standings?
15:01 Not really till end of the season.
15:05 Steve has talked about how you guys are playing a little less of that small ball lineup that was really potent last year. What’s the difference when you’re playing (inaudible)?
15:14 When you play small ball, you gotta collectively be better on the boards. When you’re a little bit bigger, you can afford to get away with just having two, three guys on the glass, but late game or during parts of the game when we go smaller, everybody has to have a collective effort on the boards.
15:39 You’ve had a couple of good games offensively this last week or so. Steve talked about getting you off the ball, running off the catch, things of that nature. How would you assess how you’ve played these last few games?
15:49 Just making decisions quicker on the ball, off the ball, offense, defense, just making decisions quicker.
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