There are two ways to view the Golden State Warriors’ 111 to 107 loss to the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night. Or it was positive that they could live with an obviously good Boston team, despite playing without a center for the entire second half. Or, if you are less inclined to drink your tea with a half full glass, you can say that this was a game that the Warriors really should have won, and they probably would have won if it weren’t for the familiar theme of Kelly Oubre Jr. egg.
In fact, the answer is somewhere in between. The Warriors had every chance of winning this game almost entirely on Stephen Curry’s back, who finished with 38 points out of seven out of 3 points, but they were also lucky to be in it due to the size deficit in which they were operating.
With a sprained wrist wiping James Wiseman and Kevon Looney, missing the second half with a sprained ankle, little Warriors could have been blown away while Boston hit them on the tables with a 51-26 differential, including 12 offensive rebounds that deflated many of the Golden State’s courageous defensive possessions.
But they have not been erased. They fought. As always. Truth be told, you have not been able to question the Warriors’ competitiveness in the past nine years when they had the advantage of talent and years when they were not the same. That basis of courage goes back to the Mark Jackson era. He was there again on Tuesday night, and has been there all season.
As for Oubre, no player is solely responsible for the outcome of a game. He does some good things from time to time. But there is really no way to ignore how damaging it has been to the Warriors, and that was certainly the case again on Tuesday, despite a traditional cash score that seems marginally acceptable to an extra scorer – 12 points out of 5 of 11 pitches.
It is the non-traditional statistics, which perfectly reflect the eyesight test, that tell the story. Consider that the Warriors were defeated by 25 points in Oubre’s 26 minutes on Tuesday. Do the math, and the Warriors, no matter who else was on the court, overcame the Celtics by 21 points when Oubre was on the bench, but somehow lost the game by four.
Plus-minus numbers in a single game are notoriously misleading, but this is a quarter-size sample size extension that is becoming impossible to ignore. As of Tuesday, the Warriors had 6.1 down per 100 possessions with Oubre on the floor, compared with 5.1 more when he was on the bench, for Cleaning the Glass.
Specifically, Oubre is killing Curry. It is almost impossible, in fact, to be as bad alongside Curry, a more-less God, as Oubre was this season. Entering Tuesday, when Curry shared the court with Oubre, the Warriors were overcome by seven points for 100 possessions. Apart from Oubre – which means leaving Curry on the ground with any four other players – Golden State is winning those minutes by 16.2 per 100 with an offensive rating of 128.7, which would be by far the best mark in the league.
Oubre did the Warriors a favor by receiving his fourth foul at the beginning of the third quarter, which sent him to the bench, under a load that Kemba Walker could see coming a mile away:
To say that Oubre has no vision would be a criminal understatement. When he is not clashing with defenders standing still, he is often meeting his own teammates. The number of times he has stepped directly out of the curry ball this season is a running joke. When he has the ball, except when he is not raising 3s that he is doing with a 22% hit, he only has eyes for the rim.
The Warriors made 30 assists on Tuesday; Oubre had two of them, and that is really above his average for the season. He could have a skyscraper in front of him and, almost admirably, he would still try to do that every time:
There is a casual perception that Oubre is a positive advocate, but that is not true. He is athletic and plays with energy, which attracts his attention when it results in a flashy game, but truth be told, he is very weak in containing dribbling penetration and is almost never in the right place ahead of time as a spinner. Even if you want to call your defense average, all things considered, it doesn’t come close to making up for your offensive deficiencies so far.
One of the only redeeming elements of Oubre’s game this season was his athletics, but even that he uses too much, like a field player with flashy hands who gets in trouble when trying to turn routine plays into one of the highlights. Most of the time, it’s the simple move that wins, and Oubre just can’t help trying to bury almost all the balls in the center of the earth instead of making contact with a foul or, God forbid, discovering a more efficient finishing angle .
Hell, even when he has an open track, he finds ways to finish it:
If there were exceptions, it would be one thing. Everyone misses a dunk / layup every now and then. Everyone has their shot blocked. But the regularity with which Oubre explores scoring opportunities at close range is astonishing.
Whenever Oubre looked a little decent this season, he immediately regressed back to his average. He did it again on Tuesday, hitting his first four shots before missing six of the last seven. He was particularly tiring in the last seven minutes and changes, missing essential 3s and clumsy passes while feeding the Boston race almost alone that would prove to be the difference, despite the late Golden State rally. Here are the low points:
You may ask: Why do the Warriors keep playing Oubre for so many minutes? Well, for a start, they are paying about $ 80 million for their services this season, including taxes. In addition, they are not exactly full of alternatives. Juan Toscano-Anderson is an intriguing player who played very well on Tuesday. Damion Lee is solid. Mychal Mulder can shoot. But you can’t give these guys 30 extra minutes a night. Jordan Poole and Nico Mannion are in the G-League. And now Looney is about to embark on the Warriors’ next trip, which means they’ll have to play exclusively small, which means a lot of Oubre.
There were rumors that the Golden State could include Oubre in an exchange, but that goes without saying at this point. The question is whether any other team would actually trade for Oubre. He has a contract that is expiring, which could perhaps attract a partner somewhere in the league, but he is also the only player in the league to have played four games so far this season when he hit 20 percent or worse. field in 10 or more attempts. These are numbers to check your eyes to make sure you are not seeing things.
For now, the Warriors are simply hoping that Oubre can eventually become a consistently acceptable player on their system. It’s a situation where every game matters, since the Warriors’ margin of error is almost non-existent this season if they want to make it into the playoffs. They will lose many games as they are; they can’t continue to be derailed by their own guy – no less than a guy who averaged 19 points and six rebounds last year to Phoenix in 35 percent of 3-point shots. You can say that Oubre’s version was a good and bad team guy, but even if it was or was the case, he clearly didn’t this bad.
Or, at least, the Warriors are hoping he isn’t. But how long can that hope last?