Looney Lineups

[WarriorGM]

The more I look at it the more I get the feeling Looney is very important.

The main 2022 championship lineup was the one featuring Steph, Wiggins, Klay, Draymond and Looney. That was still a very effective lineup in 2023 but for various reasons the team has gone away from that. Wiggins and Looney underperformed the past couple of years and Klay is no longer around. People have also criticized Draymond and Looney playing together as bad for spacing.

But the fact remains that lineup was the backbone of a championship team and one shouldn't abandon it lightly. This is all the more true with Wiggins and Looney looking more like they did during the championship year. Unfortunately for most of this season, most lineups featuring Steph, Wiggins, Draymond, and Looney have been bad for some reason. But there are exceptions and in the last couple of games against the Thunder and Jazz lineups featuring Wiggins and Looney were key to the victories. Against the Jazz the Dubs were positive just about anytime Wiggins and Looney shared the floor. Against the Thunder's starting lineup the Dubs were were +15 in 5 and a half minutes with Steph, Wiggins, Hield, GPII, and Looney on the floor. Again that's against the starting lineup of the team with the league's best defensive rating (and is projecting to be a historically great defense).

That lineup looks interesting too because it makes sense in comparison to the prior championship lineup. It sees Hield filling in for Klay and GPII filling in for Draymond. Perhaps GPII isn't the playmaker Draymond is but there seems to be some evidence that Draymond is overpassing to Steph leading to turnovers and a more one dimensional offense. Hield being a better playmaker than Klay may help balance the playmaking out too.

Perhaps the main concern is that it is a three guard lineup and the team has had some bad experiences trying to make those work but GPII isn't the same kind of guard used in previous failed experiments. And unlike those earlier attempts encouragingly the results look good with this one.

In any case there are promising lineups to be played. I cannot give up on this team knowing they aren't being played as much as they could be.

[cpower]

if you want to have a shot at winning the ring, having Looney - a 5 who can defend big or small is critical. Our problem has been the offense - because it is so terrible, Kerr had to take Looney out for more shooting and it did not end well. We need to fix the offense talent at the 2 and 4, not Looney. If we have enough offense with Looney, this team is going to be really hard to beat.

[B-King]

The adjustment was to have Looney be aggressive in looking for his shot. Teams have been swarming Curry and outside the occasional TJD roll teams haven't been made to pay for that strategy.

[Onus]

NGL it looks like we're going back to the lineup so many have called for. Curry/Buddy/Wiggins/Dray/Looney. Now if Dray could just get healthy and replace GP2 we'd be there. Have Post be the backup C to help spacing for Schroder and we might be back now that it seems like people are getting set in their roles.