Getty Golden State Warriors stars Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson high-five during a game against the Miami Heat.
In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” This is doubly true in the NBA, where teams can go from the top of the mountain to the scrap heap — and vice versa — in the blink of an eye.
Now, we’d hardly say that the Golden State Warriors have descended to cellar depths but, clearly, things have taken a turn in the Bay.
Just four months after Steph Curry and his crew returned to their championship perch by besting the Boston Celtics, the team is underperforming by a substantial degree as the 2022-23 campaign gets rolling. So much so, in fact, that Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale just namechecked the club as one of the biggest disappointments in the league.
In doing so, the hoops analyst also pointed out a particularly disturbing trend.
The Wheels Are Coming Off Sans Steph
In his write-up on the Warriors and their woeful start, Favale opined that the club has earned an early-season mulligan after hoisting the Larry in 2021-22. That said, some disturbing trends have obviously emerged.
Golden State currently hovers outside the top 15 of both offensive and defensive efficiency. It isn’t putting a ton of pressure on the rim and is shooting a below-average clip from beyond the arc (while attempting a bunch of triples). The Warriors are 27th in points allowed per possession after making a shot…
One of the biggest disappointments, though, is how much Golden State has struggled when its core players have sat, particularly in Steph’s case. Wrote Favale: “Minutes without Stephen Curry have so far been a statistical death sentence — even when newly minted nine-figure man Jordan Poole is on the floor.”
He’s not wrong. As tracked by Cleaning the Glass, the Warriors are minus-20.5 points per 100 possessions in non-garbage time minutes when Steph isn’t on the floor.
If we extrapolate that number to include all non-Steph minutes, the net swing is a whopping 25.8 points/100 poss. in the wrong direction.
The Youngsters Have to Pick Things Up
It’s hardly a hot take to say that the blue-chippers the Warriors were counting on to step into key roles in the second unit this season have yet to take ownership of their new spots in a positive way. According to Favale, this must be accounted for in the no-Steph shortfall:
It absolutely matters many of those no-Steph stretches feature James Wiseman and a host of other backups. That’s also sort of the point. Golden State hasn’t exactly immersed itself in roster development—court time for Wiseman, Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody has been kept in check—but the cumulative effect of their undertaking seems somewhat grating.
Juggling warring timelines is hard, and key reserve Donte DiVincenzo barely played before suffering a hamstring injury. The starters are slaughtering opponents, and select hiccups won’t hold (i.e. Klay Thompson shooting under 26 percent from three and sub-45 percent on twos). But the Warriors have also already entered “Let’s see what Anthony Lamb can give us?” and “Should we have waived Quinndary Weatherspoon?” territory.
Ouch.
Of course, not everything can be laid at the feet of the youngsters; all of the Warriors’ bench players are on the wrong side of the plus/minus ledger (save for rookie Patrick Baldwin Jr., who’s even in his single minute of action). That includes DiVincenzo (minus-21.2) and the team’s other “big” free agent get, JaMychal Green (minus-11.4)