The Rotation: Warriors aren’t making threes…yet
The NBA regular season is a freight train that waits for no one. With multiple games nearly every single night, it can be difficult to keep up. As a solution, we humbly offer The Rotation — a daily recap series sharing three big stories from the previous night, one focused on a player, one focused on a single play, one focused on the big picture.
Toiling in futility
By Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh)
Last night, Giannis Antetokounmpo was his usual slinky, slithery self. His box score was stuffed — 17 points, 8 rebounds, 8 assists, 3 blocks, just two turnovers — but his Milwaukee Bucks lost by 15 to the Detroit Pistons. This is the unfortunate status quo.
Through the first week of the season, the Bucks have won a two-point game over the Brooklyn Nets, and lost to the Pistons and Hornets. Antetokounmpo is averaging 23.3 points, 9.3 rebounds. 5.3 assists, 1.0 steals, and 2.0 blocks per game, shooting 50.9 percent from the field, and looking every bit like one of the best players in the league. We’ve seen this play before — great player does great things for team of mediocre talent, and it’s heart-breaking every time.
Three games are a small sample, and the Bucks can get better. Jabari Parker is still growing into his game. Matthew Dellavedova and Mirza Teletovic are still figuring out how to fit in. Rashad Vaughn and Malcolm Brogdon look like they may be downright useful. But without Khris Middleton — who is likely to miss the entire season after surgery to repair a torn hamstring — Milwaukee’s collective ceiling appears to be far lower than Antetokounmpo’s individual one.
Maybe the Bucks work themselves into a battle for one of the last few playoff spots in the Eastern Conference this season. But it maybe that the real challenge for Milwaukee this season is finding joy in mediocrity. If that’s the case, Giannis Antetokounmpo is the medicine, because he’s going to be spectacular, even if all those overstuffed box scores to show up much in the bottom line.
Justise slowly taking the training wheels off
By Chris Reichert (@Chris_Reichert)
Traditionally, players — the good ones that is — really put it all together around their third year in the NBA. Last season, as a rookie Justise Winslow had the opportunity to lay in the weeds while learning from some of the game’s greats in Dwyane Wade and Luol Deng on the perimeter. He finished seventh in minutes per game and, by all accounts, had a solid rookie season; nothing spectacular save for some random highlights, but still an encouraging opening stanza.
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Life comes at you fast. Wade, Deng, Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson are gone leaving Winslow as the minutes leader for the Heat after three games. It’s a small sample size, but still Miami is foreshadowing what is to come with their prized 20-year-old. Goran Dragic stayed around to help steer the ship back to prominence, but Winslow is taking on new opportunities nightly. Coach Spoelstra is giving him the freedom to make plays and it’s already paying early dividends.
https://twitter.com/MiamiHEAT/status/792877841654382593
Watch above as Winslow heads baseline right by Kyle Anderson, as if he wasn’t even there. This causes Kawhi Leonard to drop baseline to cover Babbitt in the corner leaving a wide open Dragic at the 3-point line. Instead of attempting an almost impossible finish, Winslow makes the high percentage decision, whipping a pass to the Slovenian lefty who drains the deep ball.
Early in the fourth quarter, Winslow noticed the mismatch of Nicolas Laprovittola guarding him and went to work. This time instead of looking for the dish, he saw the open lane after the jab step and finished through contact; contact he created.
https://twitter.com/MiamiHEAT/status/792879770610593800
The move was Harden-esque, catching his defender on his hip, thrusting his body back into him and finishing as well. These are the type of plays that Miami fans have been yearning to see from Winslow and with the reigns slowly being handed to him on the perimeter, this should become commonplace. Again, small sample size, but the results are encouraging as his assist percentage has more than doubled, jumping from 7.4 to 15.3 percent in the early going. Increases like that are not coincidence and while many spikes in production are connected to minute hikes, Winslow’s is more related to freedom in the offense.
This is the next progression for Winslow as he spurts maniacally toward his destination as the alpha of this organization. The Heat gave the San Antonio Spurs all they could handle last night, before ultimately falling just short. It was a loss but a step forward nonetheless. Learning how to be the headliner is a transitional process and while he was certainly that guy at the high school levels, he hasn’t been since. Even at Duke he was third wheel to Jahlil Okafor and Quinn Cook on their march through the madness toward a championship. Last season was merely an introduction, a minuscule peek at the aspirations of Justise. Now, we get to see him step into the limelight and drive the bike on his own.
The Warriors aren’t making threes…yet
By Chris Manning (@cwmwrites)
The Warriors will have an insane offense at some point this year is because of their three-point shooting, and the fact that the diversely talented Kevin Durant and Steph Curry are two of those shooters. When they run out their expected best five-man unit — Curry, Durant, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala — they will have three of the best three-point shooters in league history on the floor together, along with two more respectable ones. It’s not hard to envision the Warriors destroying teams with three-point shooting alone; just imagine Curry and Durant getting hot at the same time with Thompson lurking on the wing when the double teams come.
Through three games, however, Golden State isn’t hitting threes the way you’d expect them too and as a team, they are shooting 26.7 percent from three on 30 attempts per game. By comparison, the Warriors shot 41.6 percent from three last year, on 31.6 attempts per game.
Curry has been just fine — shooting 42.9 percent on 9.3 attempts per game — but as you move down the list, several players you’d expect to be knocking down threes just aren’t shooting that well. Durant, a career 37.9 percent three-point shooter, is making threes at a 30 percent clip. Green, who shot a career-best 38.8 percent from deep last year, is currently shooting 27.3 percent from three. And, more glaringly, Thompson is at 14.3 percent on seven attempts per game. He’s also shooting 25 percent on six catch-and-shoot three-point attempts per game. For his career, Thompson has never shot under 40 percent from three overall. On catch-and-shoot threes, he shot 44.3 percent last year and 46 percent in 2014-15 when the Dubs won the title.
The results of the Warriors’ shooting struggles are clear: they aren’t beating teams in the way they probably should be. On paper, this team shouldn’t beat by playing a tight game in the final few minutes against the Suns, and probably should by beating the Pelicans by a lot more than eight when scoring 122 points themselves.
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In all likelihood, this is just a temporary struggle that we’ve seen elements of before. For instance, Danny Leroux of Locked on Warriors and Sporting News pointed out that Thompson started out last season cold as well (for exactly three games, in fact) before he ended up doing very Klay Thompson things for much of the season. The Warriors also currently have an offensive efficiency of 103.9 — which is good for 12th in the NBA — while not playing anywhere close to what they are capable of. Basically, the Dubs can shoot well below their expected levels and still have an above-average offense.
When Durant, Thompson, and company start hitting from deep, their offensive efficiency will rise and we’ll get to see how good they actually can be. Until then, we wait for the shots to fall.