SACRAMENTO — The Warriors are 0-7 on the road, but they’ve led in the final five minutes in Charlotte, Miami, Orlando and Sacramento. Each time, their veteran closers (who clinched a crunch-time title in Boston five months ago) have failed to slam the door.
The fourth of those late-game failures came Sunday night against the Kings — a 122-115 final after a 10-2 burst to the finish line from Sacramento. The Warriors led 113-112 with 3:30 left. Steve Kerr, opting for a more mobile lineup that could space the floor, went with two-way player Anthony Lamb over Kevon Looney in the closing five. That decision backfired.
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Lamb was stuck on Domantas Sabonis during the game’s deciding possessions. That’s a matchup that Draymond Green clearly didn’t love. Watch what Green does when the ball trickles into Sabonis in the post late in the shot clock, operating against Lamb. Green digs down and doubles, something he very likely wouldn’t have done had Sabonis been operating against the sturdier Looney.
Sabonis kicks it out to De’Aaron Fox, who Green left. Fox hits a huge three.
The Kings bumped that lead up to four with just over two minutes left, edging it toward must-stop territory for the Warriors’ struggling defense, currently ranked 27th in the NBA with a 115.1 defensive rating. Part of that problem has been the glass. The Warriors finished last season with the league’s eighth-best rebounding rate. Otto Porter Jr. helped in that category.
They no longer have Porter off the bench and they are no longer rebounding well. The Warriors have the league’s fifth-worst rebounding rate and, because Kerr opted for Lamb over Looney down the stretch against the Kings, they were more vulnerable when Fox missed a contested mid-range jumper with 2:12 left.
Here’s the clip. You can track Sabonis. He begins at the top of the key, cuts past Green and then outworks Lamb and Andrew Wiggins for a power rebound and putback, putting the Kings up six, and stretching it to a nearly unreachable range.
Sabonis finished with 25 points and 22 rebounds, punishing the Warriors in the final minutes as Looney watched from the bench.
“It’s tough to watch from the bench,” Looney said. “But you gotta give a trade-off. We went small to spread the floor out and it was working for us. We made a push and got back in the game with that unit. So it’s the trade-off.”
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Six nights prior, the Kings were in San Francisco and Steph Curry closed out a win in crunch time with nine points in the final 1:53. That night, Curry picked on Kevin Huerter in Sacramento’s switching scheme and got whatever shot he wanted when it mattered most.
In Sacramento, coach Mike Brown adjusted, blitzing Curry and getting the ball out of his hands. He refused to let Curry throw the daggers. But that strategy leaves open room for others. The Warriors didn’t get bad looks down the stretch. Lamb and Wiggins had a pair of open 3s. They just missed. Had they made both, had they boxed out Sabonis better, and had Fox not hit some key jumpers, maybe they survive and improve to 1-6 on the road.
But that would’ve just been a band-aid over the larger wound. The Warriors are 5-8 and struggling to generate immediate answers for longer-term problems.
The defense again was too soft on the perimeter. Sabonis had a mammoth stat line that Green partly blamed on a lack of disruption at the point of attack. The Kings run a ton of offense through his dribble hand-off game, freeing Fox (22 points), Huerter (17 points) and Keegan Murray (21 points) to eat off that action.
“We allowed him to get downhill too much,” Green said of Sabonis. “We weren’t stopping the ball on those hand-offs. So he’s just rolling to a free side and it’s tough to guard.”
Last season, the Warriors might’ve gone to Gary Payton II in such a situation, changing the complexion of the game with his ball pressure. He led the NBA in steals per 36 minutes. Payton actually had a huge performance in an early-season win in Sacramento last season.
But Payton’s in Portland now and that ball pressure ability wasn’t fully replaced. Neither, it seems, was Porter’s ability to spread the floor while protecting the glass. JaMychal Green and James Wiseman are currently out of the rotation and Jonathan Kuminga is on the fringe of it. Kerr, at this point, trusts Lamb more than any of those three, and Lamb failed to grapple with Sabonis on Sunday.
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Donte DiVincenzo has added a little second unit boost since his recent return. He actually led the Warriors’ in bench minutes against the Kings, logging 24. The Warriors were a net even with DiVincenzo on the floor. Kerr only played nine guys. Moses Moody, for a second straight game, didn’t touch the floor.
Kerr explained that decision pregame, noting turnovers and fouling as areas that have inhibited Moody’s opportunities.
“The hard part for Moses and JK and Wise is they’re young guys who need to learn by making mistakes to figure out what they can and can’t do,” Kerr said. “But we’re not a team that can afford to let guys make mistakes. It’s unfair to them, but it’s the reality of what we’re facing. The way we’re playing, we’re not good enough to withstand a lot of mistakes.”
Moses Moody has been nudged out of the Warriors’ current rotation. Steve Kerr said he’s talked to Moody about “turnovers and fouling” as the inhibiting issues, but expects Moody to get back in the picture soon.
Full soundbite pic.twitter.com/gCTQRw64Ot
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) November 14, 2022
But the absence of the youth doesn’t entirely explain Sunday’s loss to the Kings. It eats away at their depth and leaves a two-way player like Lamb on the floor in crunch time. But that doesn’t explain their 13 first-half turnovers (18 in the game), their inability to guard the 3-point line (16 makes from the Kings), and the continued shooting slumps from Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole.
Poole scored 18 in his 20 minutes, but needed 14 shots, making six. He was productive in bulk, but still had a few bad defensive possessions and four jagged turnovers. Thompson went 6 of 16. The two were a combined 12 of 30.
A few of Thompson’s misses, without historical context, make his shot selection look particularly egregious. He is currently cold, making 35 percent of his shots and 33 percent of his 3s this season. But here he is, with 20 still on the shot clock, firing up a long-range transition bomb from several feet behind the line and no offensive rebounders in position.
Then here is Thompson with the shot clock off at the end of the first half. Basketball strategy always tells you to hold until a shot at the buzzer in this scenario; not allowing the opponent to get an extra offensive possession before the quarter ends, but Thompson doesn’t. He instead rises and fires with eight seconds still left. He’s bailed out by a Wiggins putback dunk. But the Kings still get an extra chance to score, indicative of an overly aggressive approach to a fault.
The Warriors are attempting 40.8 3s per game this season, second most in the NBA, despite only shooting with league-average accuracy (36.2 percent, ranked 13th). Thompson isn’t the only culprit. There has been plenty of early clock heat check chucking. Is it too much?
“Nah,” Green said. “We’ve been winning championships like that for a long time. I’m not going to say it’s too much now. We’ve shot a lot of 3s, a lot of jump shots since I’ve been here. I don’t think it’s too much. Can we get some better looks? Sure. There are times we can slow it down and get some better looks. But overall, our shooters are gonna shoot. That’s just what it is.”
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The Warriors are justifiably believing many of their current problems will be solved by trusting their championship DNA. Thompson will shoot better. Poole will stabilize. The defense will stiffen.
The core who currently has the longest streak in NBA history of winning a road playoff game in 27 consecutive series won’t go 0-41 away from home this season.
But it’ll remain tricky climbing out of this hole and some of these problems don’t have easy answers.
(Photo of Warriors center Kevon Looney guarded by Domantas Sabonis (10) and Kevin Huerter (9) of the Kings: Randall Benton / Associated Press)
