It was 36 seconds after the blow, when James Wiseman fired the Warriors’ first shot. He misses. Kelly Oubre Jr. takes the second shot. Misses. Andrew Wiggins takes the third. Misses. Draymond Green takes the fourth. Another fault.
The game is barely two minutes long, the Warriors are losing 14-0 to Utah and coach Steve Kerr wants a timeout.
Outside the time limit, Oubre takes an open look and takes his second shot, which enters. He misses the third. Wiggins misses his second shot. Oubre loses a quarter. And a fifth.
The score: Jazz 19, Warriors 2.
It has been almost five minutes of play, with the Warriors missing eight of their first nine shots, which their top scorer and NBA No. 3 scorer took the first shot. Steph Curry’s 8-meter ball falls through the net.
Next possession, exactly 30 seconds later, Curry takes the next shot, this one at 29 feet. Splash. The Golden State’s filming sleep is over. The offense is awake and active. The Warriors hit nine of the next 11 shots.
Curry scores the highest score of 24 points. He moves from the Hall of Fame Reggie Miller to second on the NBA’s list of three more points in a career. Curry cannot, however, save the Warriors from themselves.
In addition, they are losing by 17 when he is received to take action. This is one of the sections where it seems that his companions, Green generally exempt, forget that he is on the ground.
How to understand this?
“We have things to discover, obviously,” said Curry after the 127-108 defeat. “I don’t have the answers right now.”
The curry usage rate when playing with starters, according to an ESPN analysis, is 22.0 percent. This is more typical of a third option. It sucks for the player that former teammate Kevin Durant described, during the glory years, as the most important player on the court: “Steph is the attack. The offense is Steph. “
KD is right. Or he used to be.
“We see all the numbers and all the combinations and there are a lot of theories that we could talk about,” said Kerr. “But I will leave it to the (media) to evaluate and find out. We talk about everything internally, as a technical committee, and we are well aware of the combinations that work and those that don’t. We are well aware of Steph’s usage fee. “
However, it is not uncommon for Curry, the designated owner, to go two or three possessions without the ball.
Or four or five without a shot. Saturday night is the most recent example. He spent the first five minutes of the game as bait, pulling Utah defenders away from teammates who were unable to exploit the openings he created.
“The most disappointing aspect of this game and the last game is the number of times we have not moved the ball across the court,” said Kerr. “We are attacking a lock, a dribble or two, or maybe we are on our attack and we turn the corner and everyone wants to kick. The ball must move. We always preach the movement of the ball here.
“We have to understand that, especially when you’re playing against Mitchell Robinson and Rudy Gobert, you have to look to make the ball swing. You can’t just keep attacking the kick blocker or pulling up for medium range kicks. It has to be drive-and-kick. That’s the name of the game. “
It is a delicate balance now. Kerr and his team want non-Curry players to shoot when they open because that’s how Curry’s gravitational pull should work. They are open. But seeing everyone except Curry hoist 3 balls while he runs so often is counterproductive.
As seen in the opening minutes on Saturday night.
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Curry is, of course, educated about the state of the offense. He points out that there were games in which the ball was moving as planned and all members of the starting lineup benefited. He blames the weak general defense for such a static attack in the last two games, both defeats.
“One side of the floor always kind of dictates what happens on the other side,” he said. “Usually, if you are getting stops and pushing the transition, the defense is behind them. And that’s where the ball starts to bounce. But it is when the defense defines each possession and they are feeling good and their energy is high, which affects the way we play on the offensive side. “
Let Draymond recognize that the Warriors – attack and defense – are fast approaching an intersection.
“We need to find an identity,” he said. “Sometimes we move the ball, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we defend, sometimes not. We just need to establish an identity of what kind of team we are going to be.
“Are we going to be a ball-moving team? Or are we going to be an ISO team? “
Kerr, as he noted, is definitely an advocate for the movement of the ball. The Warriors, at their best, move the ball.
However, there are many cases where they seem to forget that moving the ball to Curry almost always produces production.
As the Warriors progress in the coming weeks, they will discover something about themselves. When Curry has the ball, he makes things happen. When he is out of the ball, he also makes things happen.
Fasten your seat belts, people. We are about to see how determined Kerr is to stay with this first team and face the many difficult and ugly stretches in the hope of seeing everything fit together.
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