SAN FRANCISCO – The joyride the Warriors were on while winning 10 of their first 12 games largely was a product of stellar defense, an acceptable assist-to-turnover ratio and fantastic 3-point shooting. They earned that 10-2 record.
They’ve since lost eight of 12, with all three of those categories declining. The 3-point shooting percentage has plummeted from third in the NBA to 14th.
Can this roster recover? Or must general manager Mike Dunleavy and his front office squad pick up their intensity toward a trade?
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Or maybe this is something that will fade in the next few games. A slump.
“Nah,” Lindy Waters III said Friday after practice. “Nah.
“The ball is going to go in. You're going to miss on a night-to-night basis, defensive schemes, everything you can take into account. From the outside, you can think it’s a slump.
But like I said, we've been in every single game. We've had chances to win a lot of games. But I would never call that a slump.”
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Waters came to the Warriors over the summer as a branch plucked from Oklahoma City’s tree of 3-point shooters. He had a terrific start but has cooled appreciably. The 6-foot-6 wing shot 40.7 percent from deep through the team’s first dozen but since is at 30.6 percent.
Waters has plenty of company in the team’s recent slide. Let’s scan the designated 3-point shooters on Golden State’s roster:
Stephen Curry, the all-time 3-point king, was at 43.2 percent through 12 and since has taken a slight dip to 39.8 percent.
Buddy Hield, one of the NBA’s true 3-point shooting marksmen, dropped from 46.9 percent in the first 12 games to 37.6 percent in next 12. Still respectable, but below his norm and a considerable dip from an initially unsustainable number.
De’Anthony Melton was at a respectable 37.1 percent but lasted 11 games before a knee injury ended his season.
Moses Moody shot 45.8 percent through the team’s first 12 games, 23.5 percent since.
Jonathan Kuminga, advised to spend last summer honing his 3-point shot, has struggled from the start, shooting 31.7 percent through the first 12 and 30.2 percent since.
Draymond Green is not one of the league’s snipers, so his 45.2-percent figure through the first 12 was never going to last. He is since at 29.7 percent.
Only two players, Brandin Podziemski and Andrew Wiggins, are draining 3-balls more efficiently now than earlier. Podziemski, at 19.1 percent through the first 12 games, has since shot 31.6 percent – but a superb 41.2 percent over his last five games. Wiggins was at 37 percent through the first 12 but has since shot 47.4 percent.
Even with the recent inefficiency damaging that approach, coach Steve Kerr believes the still has enough quality shooters to compete at the highest level.
“I think we have plenty of shooting,” Kerr said. “We're trying to find combinations that fit. There are times when we put a combination on the floor where maybe it's a little too heavily slanted towards the offense or the defense, and now we're scrambling a little bit.
“We're deep, but we still have to really manage the full 48 in terms of balancing our rotations.”
Once Melton went down, Kerr realized he had to decide on a replacement starter at shooting guard. He could have gone with Gary Payton II, a terrific but struggles to make triples. There was Podziemski, whose triples are starting to fall in line but is vulnerable on defense. Kerr initially turned to Waters, someone on the fringe of the rotation but might offer a good balance of offense and defense.
All three have had opportunities to start alongside Curry, with Payton being the most recent. If he’s on the floor with Kuminga and Green, the Warriors have three players that don’t command defender at the arc.
And to think the Warriors opened the season appeared to have enough deep shooting to play “four out,” with at least four players comfortable shooting from distance. They were, at long last, equipped to join the rest of the NBA.
The equipment, however, has not been working as well as it did at the start. There certainly is no surplus of shooters.
“You can never have too much,” Kerr conceded. “I think losing Melton was a big part of what we've seen in the last few weeks because what you really need is two-way. You need a shooter who can also defend so that you're not having to make decisions based on offense or defense.”
That was Melton, a high-level defender and a solid shooter beyond the arc. He was, to be sure, a “perfect fit” for what Golden State had in mind.
There might be an ideal replacement somewhere in the league, but he is not on the current roster.