WarriorGM wrote:Looking at gameflow data it would seem the game was lost in the period starting 2:46 seconds from the end of the 2nd Q up to 7:31 left in the 3rd Q. The Dubs went -24 in those roughly 8 minutes. The Warriors offense just disappeared during that time so I'm getting the impression the Nuggets flipped the switch on their defense and effectively clamped the starting lineup. Steph, Kuminga, Wiggins, and Podz all had shots but missed most of them so it doesn't seem like it was only one guy that was the source of the problem. The coaching staff will need to study closely what happened in those minutes.
Interestingly enough that miserable period was bookended by GPII stints where the Warriors were actually +/- positive with him on the court. Even more curious is that GPII shared those minutes with Steph and Podz during the earlier stint and Steph and Klay in the later one so going smaller in these instances didn't seem to hurt.
A setback but one the team can learn important lessons from. My takeaway is that the current starting lineup with Steph, Podz, Kuminga, Wiggins, and Draymond isn't good enough to be an all-weather starting lineup. The team still needs to find something better against the best teams or alternatives based on matchups.
It’s the system that isn’t great. Most of the offense was probing for openings where there isn’t one. It’s at that time, someone has to force the defense to respond. They just kept passing the ball around doing nothing because Denver’s defense is tight.
Kerr made things worse by bringing in Klay for offense when he is a complete liability on defense. The thing Kerr doesn’t realize is that the latest winning streak hasn’t been because of offense, it’s the defense that led to offense, not the other way around. There was no reason for them to lose a ten point lead in a matter of minutes. If a team can’t defend, it doesn’t matter how much they score. And especially against a great defense, winning by scoring is a fool’s errand. They have to put up some sort of resistance because when Denver gets stops and goes in transition, no slow midgets are going to get back in time to do anything.