With less than 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter — the Golden State Warriors protecting a precarious four-point lead with the returning Steph Curry on the bench and Jimmy Butler being the sole advantage creator on the floor — the Warriors scored two points to stretch their lead to five. The points were courtesy of a last-ditch effort by Moses Moody to create something out of nothing, after the initial action had been successfully denied by the Minnesota Timberwolves, a half-court set that stagnated
when Butler attacked Rudy Gobert on a switch, which, to Gobert’s credit, was defended well. Butler instead gets the ball to Brandin Podziemski to initiate ball-screen action, perhaps in an attempt to attack Gobert’s presumed drop coverage.
Podziemski coaxes Gobert to switch onto him, as well. Again, to Gobert’s credit, he doesn’t budge an inch against the switch, and the possession is in danger of going nowhere (a familiar situation for the Warriors’ offense). Sensing Naz Reid ignoring him, Moody zooms along the baseline to make himself available for the pass:
The Moody bucket above would turn out to be the last field goal scored by the Warriors before a five-minute stretch in which the water was completely shut off, courtesy of a 14-0 Wolves run that flipped the game from a five-point Warriors lead to a 12-point deficit — an astounding 17-point turnaround. The spark behind that run was — as was the case throughout several points throughout the fourth quarter — a defensive mistake (off of a made basket — the one from the possession above, as a matter of fact), an ill-advised decision by Moody to go under a screen for Reid, in what was a quick-hitting “Pistol” action set in early offense, a sequence Steve Kerr referred to after the game as one of several defensive mishaps that, in his view, did his team in:
“I thought our defense let us down tonight,” Kerr told reporters after the game. “We had several plays in transition in both halves where we lost sight of Naz Reid and a couple of their shooters.”
A couple of those shooters would mostly refer to Reid and Donte DiVincenzo, who would hit several huge threes late in the game to keep the Wolves alive and, ultimately, win it for them. But more on those later.
A Disadvantaged Team in More Ways Than One (Heading)
If you were to give an abridged reason of why the Warriors lost tonight, it would be, as Kerr mentioned, because of a lackluster defensive performance. But it was also combined with a couple of situations that highlighted several disadvantages the Warriors have had to deal with this season, magnified by a team like the Wolves even without their best player in Anthony Edwards.
The first disadvantage: the lack of athleticism to match the Wolves’ own abundance of athleticism. Whenever the Warriors are mired in an offensive quagmire, such as the one they found themselves stuck in against the Wolves, transition opportunities increase for their opponents. Having to run back against younger, faster, and larger adversaries can be both physically and mentally taxing:
The “larger” part of that equation was glaringly pronounced against the Wolves, who had their way with the smaller Warriors. Their three-big rotation of Gobert, Reid, and Julius Randle combined for 66 points in the paint — 22 more than the Warriors’ 44. When matched up against configurations that often had three guards in at the same time (with the 6-foot-6 Butler at the four), the Wolves quickly found out that an easy source of offense was to target those guards with either Randle or Reid, force help off of Gobert, and dish the ball to the French center for a wide-open up-close shot:
And the last and arguably most debilitating disadvantage: the lack of play finishing around the Warriors’ main offensive engines. Against the Wolves, the three-point shot that was there against the Chicago Bulls disappeared: 15-of-46 (32.6%), a microcosm of the gap between the Warriors’ willingness to let it fly from outside (46.1% three-point attempt rate, first in the league) and their actual success rate on such shots (36.6%, 13th).
Let it be known that the Warriors’ offense scuffled at crucial junctures, but not for a lack of trying. Open shots were certainly generated but ended up missing. At some point, the acknowledgement of good shots being generated needs to be accompanied by timely shot making, which the Warriors did not have tonight nor at several other points in other games they needed to win.
In stark contrast, the Wolves had plenty of timely shot making from the likes of former Warrior DiVincenzo, who hit two huge threes down the stretch. One of those threes was a momentum snatcher of sorts, coming immediately after a Moody steal and bucket that gave the Warriors a three-point cushion.
As it would turn out, a coverage miscommunication between Curry and Butler turned out to be the culprit.
Curry and Butler’s Costly Mistake (heading)
As with most cases of blown pick-and-roll coverages, a disconnect between the defenders is almost always the cause. Both Curry (defending DiVincenzo) and Butler (defending Randle) are forced into a ball-screen action between DiVincenzo and Randle.
The thought process behind Butler dropping back and not immediately closing out on DiVincenzo was perhaps Butler thinking the coverage was dropping back, with Curry supposedly fighting over the Randle screen in order to recover toward DiVincenzo (also, Butler did not want Randle to have the Curry matchup, for obvious reasons).
The thought process behind Curry sticking to Randle? Simply put, Curry thought it was a switch and therefore did not make a clear effort to fight over the Randle screen.
The result: DiVincenzo stepping calmly into a pull-up three that tied the game:
In a vacuum, the blame on this instance can certainly be placed on the shoulders of Curry and Butler. But in Curry’s case, it’s difficult to assign much blame to him on a night where he was the only source of consistent offense (surprise, surprise). His 39 points on 62.7% True Shooting paced an offense that did not have much of a chance without him on the floor, especially with Butler mostly being a passive party in the non-Curry minutes. While Butler’s efforts to move the ball and create open shots for teammates is admirable, it was on a night where his shot making was needed and should’ve taken precedence over his need to blend into the collective.
The larger takeaway from this loss paints a bleak picture. The Warriors are an aging team with youth pieces that have fallen out of favor for various reasons, most notably a failure to develop into pieces that could complement the top end of the roster (which is not entirely their fault, to be fair). An abundance of guards limits the team’s versatility on both ends, but it is most pronounced on the defensive side of the floor, as mentioned above. They have been painfully average offensively despite having one of basketball history’s preeminent offensive engines who can still puppeteer defenses at 37-years old.
At 13-13 — as middle of the pack as a team can be — there needs to be some sort of reckoning from the front office, coupled with necessary changes, if their goal is to have even a puncher’s chance at competing in the West, let alone for an NBA championship.
