DENVER — The Warriors rounded out a tough eight-city, eight-game trip around the country with a 6-3 record. All three of those losses came down to the wire, and two of their wins came on game-winners from Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
Nearly every night after games Curry speaks to the media and shares clues about Golden State’s “togetherness” and “competitive spirit” and why he’s excited to see it so early in the season while they’re still ironing kinks and getting acquainted with the playbook and new faces. But Curry stopped his sentence short when comparing their road success this year to last year’s woes.
“I’m not going talking about last year,” he said. “I’m gonna stop.”
But last year provides good context for what went wrong then and, now, what looks right and wrong this year in comparison.
The Warriors play their next six games at home, but here are four takeaways from the Warriors’ first big road trip.
A second scorer needs to step up
Early dividends show that going for an older, smarter team is paying off because this team isn’t beating itself by committing a ton of turnovers. Steph Curry is playing out of his mind, but to get to the next level, the wings will need to show up to take some of the load off him.
Curry is averaging 30 points per game, shooting 47.3% from 3 and 51% from the field playing 32 minutes per game – nearly four minutes fewer than his career average, mostly to preserve his legs over the course of an early-season road-heavy schedule. A more methodical offense is making that efficiency pay.
But Dario Saric is the only other Warrior to have at least 20 points in a game, that game coming in a win against the Thunder. Klay Thompson has come closest, scoring 19 and 18 points twice. To get to the next level, ideally one or more of the Warriors’ wings will need to get hot and give the offense another scoring dynamic.
Andrew Wiggins
If Wiggins’ shots start falling and he keeps the same aggression he had against the Denver Nuggets, the Warriors can take flight during this upcoming homestand.
But it’s been a rough start for him — inconsistent on defense and in a daze on offense. But in nine games, the Warriors are minus-48 in the 201 minutes Wiggins has played and plus-91 when he’s off the court. That’s a significant gap, and the Warriors need him to progress back to his mean.
A lot of that deficit comes from his lackluster scoring. The same player who made the All-Star game on the back of a career 3-point shooting season is now shooting 15% from 3. He’s moving away from the 3-point line, but has been missing some easy looks at the rim and taking strange off-balance shots. He’s averaging 10.8 points per game.
Wiggins said after the Cleveland loss he “just needs to get into a rhythm” on offense.
“I just need to keep hooping, don’t think,” he said. “Just go out there and play basketball.”
Steve Kerr has continuously deferred any concern about Wiggins’ struggles.
“It’s been a little bit of a slow start. But his defense is the key,” he said in Cleveland. “And the better he is defensively the more his offense will come. Not worried about Wiggs at all. It’s a slow start, he’s got a long track record.”
Just nine games into the season, it’s expected that Kerr would temper concern. But Wiggins played zero minutes in the Warriors’ tight win against Detroit and, save for a Draymond Green-less game in Denver, hasn’t been closing most of their games thus far. Kerr has sometimes opted to go small in closing lineup – sometimes with Gary Payton II or Paul. T
he Warriors need Wiggins and Jonathan Kuminga’s length and athleticism on the wings to challenge opposing teams’ size. It’s early, but it’s imperative that Wiggins snaps out of his daze soon.
Chris Paul’s impact
The Warriors don’t like to re-live last season, but the contrast is too stark to ignore. Last year’s late-game collapses where the Warriors completely lost grip of winnable games through turnovers and discombobulation have reigned in the mistakes this year.
Paul’s 66 assist to seven turnover ratio tells the story, but he’s also a fountain of wisdom. He and Draymond Green dominate assistant coach Anthony Vereen’s rounds of NBA Trivia and he’s sharing his knowledge as a longtime adversary with his new teammates.
In practices, Paul gives perspective on old Warriors’ pet plays because he has played against the Curry/Kerr offense for a decade and knows by heart everything they run based on how his teams defended them.
Paul’s teammates have said he can sometimes reverse engineer their offense. Curry downplayed that concept: “It’s not rocket science,” he said, but emphasized that Paul is an encyclopedia of info on Warriors.
“I would frame it as he is another great mind to tap into when you’re trying to solve puzzles on court,” Curry said. “Offensively and defensively, it’s like stuff that I see or the way that I see it might be different…He remembers things that worked for him against us. Every game is a puzzle you try to figure out, and we’re both in tuned with that.”
A career starter in 18 seasons before this, Paul is still adjusting to life off the bench, but he’s embracing his role as leader of the younger guys that line the second unit he runs. He circles up with them between stoppages to go over little miscommunications and answer questions. He’s a team-high plus-63 in nine games.
“Chris is like a pilot,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said. “He’ll be calling the play, calling for the ball screen when he’s at half court. So he makes the game really easy, being able to dive and make plays off of him. It’s great.”
Added Moses Moody: “He’s talking on the floor, off the floor, always tells you what he’s thinking. “But the underrated skill he has is that he’s a listener, too. He’s not someone who will sit there and talk to you and expect you to go with everything you say. He opens up communication.”
Moses Moody’s growth
Speaking of Moses…
Moses Moody’s 17.6 points per game is making him a legitimate scoring threat that’s held up the crucial “Non-Steph” minutes. But he’s also taken a huge leap defensively from last year.
His 1.4 steals per game ranks third behind Payton and Paul. He has 11 steals total. It’s a stat indicative of his feel in his third NBA year. Moody feels the difference, too.
“Definitely off the ball, stuff slows down and you know where to be and where to help,” Moody said. “On the ball, too, there’s so many things people will do, this way or that way, so it’s just about being able to slow things down and know where you want to send guys and knowing personnel, things that come over time.”
“I feel like it was a significant jump because last year had so many highs and lows and how differently it went. With the team camaraderie, things feel better and a lot smoother this year so a lot of that goes into that large jump, but I do feel the difference.”